By 1996 when the crisis was already abating, Africa itself was already coming to terms with the continental realities that led countries like Rwanda to genocide. For instance, the 1994 Pan African Conference was convened to further the AU’s NEPAD initiative and its objective of finding home-grown administrative and political solutions to Africa’s multiple and complex postcolonial realities and challenges. Between 2000 and 2010, there were seven fundamental public sector reform priority areas that derive from the general recognition that an African developmental state could only emerge to the extent that African leaders invest tremendously in public service reforms. These fundamental areas are (a) fundamental basic reform including rationalization of ministries and public agencies and the reform of policy making processes; (b) service delivery improvement including the privatization of public enterprises; (c) reform to enhance good governance including anti-corruption processes; (d) decentralization, especially with regards to local government matters; (e) information technology; (f) reform of incentives and pay; and (g) the reduction of waste.
Specifically, and between 2001 and 2005, most African countries were driven by the imperatives of democracy and democratic governance blowing across the globe to invest heavily in outstanding modernisation of their public services. These reform focus involves good governance, pay and incentives, human resource development, computerization and information management, records management, public-private partnership, legal and judicial sector reform, performance management, rationalization, and so many others.
The most surprising of all these innovative transformations is that of Rwanda. By 2005, and precisely eleven years after the devastation of the genocide and war conflict, Rwanda was already back in contention for good and democratic governance. By the time Prof. Ladipo Adamolekun conducted his groundbreaking study of public service reform of 29 sub-Saharan African countries, Rwanda was characterized as a “committed reformer” alongside Benin, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Tanzania and Mauretania. Together with the major public service reforms of Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria, I highlighted in Managing Complex Reforms Rwanda’s critical investment in ICT as the crucial dynamics that could transform its pubic service system.
Unfortunately, within the same context of the study of the 29 African countries, Nigeria only managed the status of a hesitant reformer, even though consecutive governments have made tremendous input into transforming the performance and efficiency dynamics of the Nigerian public service. Fast forward to the present, and the Nigerian state had made some significant leaps forward that should have transformed her into a committed reformer. Two examples of this will suffice. The first is the SERVICOM reform initiative. This is a service delivery framework that is meant to undergird Nigeria’s commitment to democratic governance. SERVICOM is a fundamental commitment to holding public servants accountable for service rendered to the public, the development of a data culture which could backstop the appraisal of the performance of the service charter, and essentially the building of a citizen-centric public service.
However, the business of reform is a constantly unfolding one that requires continuous innovative oiling and commitment. There is no one country anywhere in the world that would ever think it has arrived at the end of modernizing and reforming its public service if it ever hoped to keep its democratic aspiration alive. It is recognition of this that the Nigerian government itself has crafted the irreducible blueprint for a total revamping of its public service system. This is the National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR). The beauty of this blueprint is that it combines historical awareness of Nigeria’s reform efforts to date, as well as a future aspiration of making the public service “a world-class public service delivering government policies and programmes with professionalism, excellence and passion.” The motive behind the NSPSR is to achieve the modernizing imperative that must keep a public service system always capacity ready to overcome every challenge that a modern world may throw at the public service. This is even more urgent in the case of a third world state like Nigeria whose administrative environment is very difficult.
Yet, it is within this difficult context that a state like Rwanda has made a significant and commendable headway in transforming its public service into an administrative and democratic reference point. This is why it is a very solid decision by the leadership of the Nigerian civil service to understudy the Rwandan public service system and how it has overcome its crippling national challenge to become an example of an evolving commitment to democratic governance in a continent where leadership has become a serious challenge to democracy and development. However, even a commendable collaborative effort like this is not something that could be taken for granted. On the contrary, there must be some significant points of interaction and engagement which the understudying country must take as its action strategies. Rwanda’s administrative transformation was a systematic one that evolved from its historical experience and its sense of its responsibility to its citizens and to posterity of unborn Rwandans. What then can we learn or even unlearn from the Rwandan administrative experience since 1998? This will be my reflection in another piece.