Title: The Politics of Betrayal: African Agency in the Perpetuation of Underdevelopment and Conflict
Authors: Dr. Arinaitwe Julius, Asiimwe Isaac Kazaara
Volume: 10
Issue: 1
Pages: 183-190
Publication Date: 2026/01/28
Abstract:
This study examined African agency in perpetuating underdevelopment and conflict through a quantitative analysis of 48 sub-Saharan African countries over the 2000-2023 period, testing the "politics of betrayal" framework which posited that African political elites exercised considerable agency in producing developmental failures through systematic resource extraction, institutional degradation, and strategic manipulation of ethnic identities and democratic processes. Utilizing panel data from multiple international sources including the World Bank, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Transparency International, ACLED, and V-Dem datasets, the research employed a comprehensive analytical strategy incorporating univariate analysis, bivariate correlations, structural equation modeling (SEM), and mixed effects models to examine relationships between elite behavior variables (corruption, illicit financial flows, clientelism, ethnic favoritism, resource rent capture, and democratic backsliding) and developmental outcomes (GDP growth, Human Development Index, and conflict intensity). The univariate analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity across countries with mean GDP growth of 2.34% (SD=4.12), average corruption scores of 32.4 out of 100, illicit financial flows averaging 5.8% of GDP, clientelism indices of 64.3, and ethnic favoritism scores of 6.2 out of 10, indicating widespread governance challenges alongside considerable cross-national variation. Bivariate correlations demonstrated strong negative associations between elite predation variables and developmental outcomes, with corruption correlating at r=-0.487 with GDP growth (p<0.001), clientelism at r=-0.612 with HDI (p<0.001), while ethnic favoritism showed strong positive correlation with conflict events (r=0.678, p<0.001), and democratic backsliding correlated positively with conflict intensity (r=0.591, p<0.001). Mixed effects modeling revealed that corruption had significant negative impacts both within countries over time (?=-0.089, p<0.001) and between countries (?=-0.124, p<0.001), while critical interaction effects showed that corruption was especially damaging in resource-rich contexts (?=-0.078, p=0.001) and ethnic favoritism was particularly destabilizing in fractionalized societies (?=0.142, p<0.001), with the high intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC=0.603) indicating that 60% of growth variance occurred between rather than within countries. These findings collectively demonstrated that African elites actively perpetuated underdevelopment through deliberate governance practices that prioritized personal enrichment over national development, operating through both direct extraction and indirect institutional degradation mechanisms, with structural conditions moderating but not determining these relationships. The study concluded that while external factors remained important, African agency constituted a primary driver of developmental failure, calling for enhanced domestic accountability mechanisms, redesigned international assistance frameworks that address elite capture, and inclusive political settlements that reduce ethnic patronage systems.