Demand for Better Services and Infrastructure on the Rise in Africa

While employment has been the main concern for Africans over the last decade, demands for better services and infrastructure have been on the rise since 2008, and worries about terrorism and violence are less and less confined to conflict zones.

Not only are African countries reforming their public institutions, they are also taking their business environments seriously, which can yield economic dividends over the long term but typically has limited impact in the short term. Some indicators and expert reports hint at improvements in rules and regulations affecting businesses.

The severity and geographic scope of politically motivated violence in the form of terrorism or communitarian conflict has been increasing in Africa over the past few years. This has spurred African countries to work together to find regional solutions, but international co-operation is difficult.

African citizens are increasingly becoming effective at demanding and obtaining improvements in governance. Success stories include the Nobel-prize winning institutions of Tunisia that managed to create a freer and more democratic society as well as new forms of civil oversight in some countries to give citizens other ways to influence policy beyond voting and protesting.

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Public protests are mainly related to jobs, public services and political disagreements Looking at a variety of metrics is necessary to improve our understanding of citizens’ expectations of governments and other public institutions. Opinion surveys and the results of elections are among the best indicators available. However, tracking various forms of public protest and the reaction to them provides an additional indication of the extent to which these opinions and motivations are strong enough to inspire action.

Interpreting the variations in civil tension indices requires great care: while they may have economic costs, more frequent demonstrations and strikes may also reflect the maturation of increasingly open governance systems. Following the 2011 regime change in Egypt, constitutional changes were accompanied by riots and protests, undermining the Egyptian economy. In South Africa, a five-month-long strike in the mining sector cost about ZAR 12 million in 2014 and is estimated to have knocked off about two percentage points from GDP growth in the first quarter of 2015. The strike – the most costly in South African history – did not result in substantially higher wages.