Great Expectations

Last week, Steph and I had one of our Kenyan friends over for dinner and we had a very interesting conversation about life, politics, and change in Africa. I was really proud of Steph for especially seeking our friend's insight into things, to get a truly Kenyan view on things. One idea that our friend really espoused was avoiding trying to implement ideas/modes of operating from the West to Africa without taking context into account. For example, she talked about how roads here are made by Western engineers and are focused on carrying cars and trucks as in the States. However, in many places a majority of people travel by bike or foot, why shouldn't there be more bike paths or at least places to walk safely down the road? One the biggest fears of ex-pats here about driving at night is that they'll hit somebody because so many people are walking and there is no sidewalk.
Another issue she talked about is democracy. She seemed to believe Kenya (and much of Africa) is not ready for democracy the way it is practiced now in the West. Her perspective is that most voters vote for personalities and not issues. Elections are little more than popularity contests and it will take much time before voters are informed to the point where they can vote intelligently for national leaders. She suggested a quasi-electoral college system where locals only vote for local leaders and then those elected officials vote for national leaders. We should remember that America originally only let the white, male, landowners vote for president and even then, the electoral college still ultimately decided things. The framers of our constitution were in many ways afraid of the mass vote, and wanted to avoid the type of uninformed voting our friend talked about. Remember that African countries have only been independent for ~50 years and our country is not only much older, but has enjoyed ample times of peace to develop political structures.
I thought it was interesting that she was especially adamant about the importance (or lack thereof) of the American set of "essential civil liberties." She asked, what good is a free press without food on the table? I agree with her that there is a hierarchy of needs, and until a country can enable its people to provide for their basic needs some of the freedoms that Americans see as non-negotiable become less important. It makes sense then that if a strong-man dictator can provide food (and cruelty) while a weak democracy can provide neither food nor rule of law, that people may prefer a dictator.
In no way am I diminishing my appreciation for the freedoms we are afforded in the States. However, I think we need to be careful when applying our vision of "good governance" to other countries who may or may not be culturally or structurally ready to adopt what has worked for us. In many ways, I think Americans have been blinded by our own political success and immediately assume our way is the best for everybody. However, our great expectations for the rest of the world may often be inappropriate.