In his lat­est com­men­tary, Paul Col­lier ana­lyzes U.S. Pres­i­dent Obama’s remarks on African lead­er­ship. Col­lier says that besides more aid, per­haps what Africa needs is more accoun­tants. We found Collier’s com­men­tary in the Guardian.

The most explo­sive was that Africa’s core prob­lem is its own mis­gov­er­nance: Africa’s per­sis­tent poverty has been largely self-inflicted. Obama is the first west­ern leader to have the polit­i­cal space to deliver this tough but nec­es­sary mes­sage. He does not need a photo-op with smil­ing Africans to sig­nal to vot­ers back home that he is a com­pas­sion­ate sort of guy. Nor does he risk being denounced. His pro­tec­tion is in part that it is not pos­si­ble to imag­ine Obama in a pith hel­met; but beyond that, nobody can seri­ously ques­tion Obama’s sin­cere con­cern to help his father’s con­ti­nent. His state­ment can­not be inter­preted as being the pre­lim­i­nar­ies to neglect.

Sec­ond, the solu­tion to mis­gov­er­nance will come from within Africa: the key strug­gle is inter­nal. By choos­ing to visit Ghana – which recently hosted an hon­est elec­tion, with the gov­ern­ing party nar­rowly los­ing – Obama flagged up that lead­er­ship depends crit­i­cally on the integrity of the polit­i­cal process.

Obama has made a clar­ion call for change, but more impor­tantly, he is the change. Africans see Obama as a fel­low African, but unlike most of Africa’s own lead­ers he per­son­i­fies the lead­er­ship val­ues that he preaches. Poor lead­er­ship is not intrin­sic to African lead­er­ship; it is intrin­sic only to the peo­ple who have jos­tled their way into presidencies.

Why has the selec­tion of African lead­er­ship been so dis­as­trous? The prob­lem lies not with Africans but with the struc­ture of the poli­ties in which they live. Around the world the chance of a stolen elec­tion soars if the soci­ety is poor, small, and resource-rich. Even then it is not inevitable: Botswana started with just these fea­tures yet it is a func­tion­ing democ­racy. But such coun­tries need strong checks and bal­ances such as a free press and what polit­i­cal sci­en­tists call “veto points” – inde­pen­dent bases of power that can block pres­i­den­tial deci­sions. The democ­ra­ti­sa­tion that swept across Africa after the fall of the Soviet Union in most cases amounted to lit­tle more than elections.

Which takes us to Obama’s final mes­sage: Amer­ica will help, where it can, to tilt the bal­ance towards brave peo­ple strug­gling for change. Amer­i­can money will be con­di­tional upon decent gov­er­nance. Where pub­lic money can be looted, the polit­i­cal class – no mat­ter what its orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion – will end up peo­pled by crooks. In Africa aid is such a major com­po­nent of pub­lic money that the scope for cap­ture mat­ters enormously.

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