**Figure 3. Political inclusion and accountability and economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa (2021)**

<!-- Start of picture text --> Seychelles<br>4.5<br>Equatorial Guinea Gabon Botswana South AfricaMauritius<br>Eswatini Namibia<br>AngolaMauritaniaNigeriaCote d'IvoireKenya Cabo Verde 4<br>Sudan Cameroon Benin Senegal<br>Guinea Ghana<br>Comoros<br>Eritrea Chad Congo, Rep. Ethiopia Uganda Tanzania ZambiaGuinea-BissauBurkina FasoLesothoSao Tome and Principe 3.5<br>Somalia Zimbabwe Rwanda TogoMaliMozambique Niger Gambia, TheSierra Leone<br>Burundi Central African Republic Madagascar Liberia<br>South Sudan Malawi 3<br>Congo, Dem. Rep.<br>2.5<br>-2.00 -1.50 -1.00 Voice and accountability-0.50 0.00 0.50 1.00<br>log GDP pc PPP<br><!-- End of picture text --> <mark>Note: The x-axis represents the World Governance Indicator on voice and accountability. Oil rich economies are represented in yellow; non-oil but resource-rich economies in green; non-resource rich countries in blue. The data is the latest available (2021). Source: WGI database for voice and accountability indicator and WDI database for database for GDP per capita.</mark> Governance breakdowns underlie security and service delivery challenges and weaken the social contract.<sup>3</sup> Despite increased military spending, national security forces tend to be in decay (Dwyer 2017 and Bagayoko 2022), and African states struggle to respond to the security demands of their citizens. Inefficient public spending and chronic poor or under-administration due to low revenue collection prevent improvements in quality service delivery. More broadly, a global backlash against liberal institutions coupled with the rise of populism, facilitated by the rise of social media and pressure on traditional media, has also contributed to the weakness of social contracts on what a social contract is). High levels of corruption including illicit financial flows are further fueling citizen distrust in political authorities and state institutions.

The continent has also witnessed a sharp increase in conflict and violence fueled by extremist groups capitalizing on locally-based grievances, such as political marginalization (Dowd 2015) across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, Mozambique and elsewhere (Boly and Kere 2023). In a number of countries, a failing social contract and the rise of non-state armed groups have also gone hand in hand with the return of coups and the militarization of politics – further fueling political instability. While coups were a common occurrence in the post-independence era, their number substantially decreased from the 2000s; in the

> 3 A 2021 World Bank report, _Social Contracts for Development: Bargaining, Contention and Social Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa,_ built on the framework of WDR 2017 to examine how the citizen-state bargaining process shapes governance.  Social contracts can be understood as “a dynamic agreement between state and society on their mutual roles and responsibilities.” Social contracts can be evaluated on three “compasses”: (1) process—how formal and informal bargaining mechanisms mediate civil and state interests and capabilities; (2) outcomes—the extent to which they deliver inclusive developmental policies and outcomes; and (3) resilience—the extent to which they are responsive to and aligned with citizen expectations. The report highlights the ways in which citizen collective action in SSA is hampered by low levels of trust, appeals to identity politics and layers of mediated authorities. The state, in turn, tends to invest capacity in maintaining bargains among the elite while appeasing citizens with populist policies like subsidies. Where citizen capacity and expectations outpace what the state is offering, this can result in realigning the social contract. But where the interests and capabilities of the state cannot accommodate such changes, it can result in deeper mistrust and even conflict.

4