Politics of the belly

According to Lynn M. Thomas of the University of Washington: The politics of the belly points to the propensity of politicians to hoard and greedily consume resources in things and people.

[1]Similar in concept to neopatrimonialism, in which private sector support is bought by the state, the Politics of the Belly is a metaphor for a form of governance that arose across Africa after decolonisation.

Bayart argues that historically African leaders have benefited by straddling the interface between external sources of revenues and their people, for example the kings of Dahomey trading with Portuguese and British merchants.

Contemporarily, aid is the main source of external resource which can best be managed by leaders for their own enrichment as well as for converting into followers, which in turn allow access to more prestigious gatekeeper roles.

Bayart, in his effort to historicise African rule, argues that material resources are used to acquire politically loyal followers.

For example, Bayart writes that to achieve a seat in the Ivorian legislature an aspiring MP would have to expend to equivalent value of 40,000 tonnes of cocoa in largesse to followers in exchange for their votes.

Ethnic tension is always present and periodically clashes of intensity ranging from localised rioting as witnessed recently in the central city of Jos between the countries Muslim and Christian populations, to violent clashes between government soldiers and the Ogoni in the state's oil rich delta region, to the full-scale civil war against the Biafran separatists.

The latter in his four years managed to embezzle over $4 billion before allegedly suffering a heart attack during a session with four prostitutes, in what was dubbed by Nigerians at the time "a coup from heaven".

[18] As a consequence of Bayart's longue duree approach to Africa, critics have accused him of homogenising the African political experience and of rendering static the history of the continent.

[20] Bayart, a Frenchman, is also criticised for focusing on Francophone countries to draw conclusions about the entirety of the sub-Saharan continent (with the exception of Ethiopia).

Bayart's confidence in his politics of the belly model, Young writes, obviates the need to actually examine any institution, ideology or personality.