BAOBIZZ: An African Perspective on Global Issues

In a rule of law, justice fulfils a paradoxical but essential function: it exercises part of the coercive power of the State while protecting citizens from abuses of that same power. It may arrest, judge, condemn and imprison; but it remains legitimate only if it acts according to pre-emptive, precise, impersonal and applicable rules to all, including those who govern.

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There are questions that the world has been asking America for decades, and that America never really answers. How can a mature, sophisticated democracy with the most powerful institutions on the planet accept that a shooting in a primary school is not the last such event? — But just the next one in a long series?

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Senegalese democracy demonstrated in 2024 a remarkable political maturity: a peaceful alternation of elections in a context of real institutional tensions. This is a valuable achievement. But the first democratic generation — pluralism, free elections, alternation — We must now give way to a second generation: control democracy. A democracy where not only the rulers are appointed by the people, but where they are held accountable — concretely, documentaryly, institutionally.

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For a long time, the United States was presented as the most accomplished laboratory of modern capitalism. First world economic power, undisputed technological leader, issuer of the international reserve currency. Yet, behind this image of prosperity is a less visible but fundamental reality: the American economy today rests on an unprecedented level of debt in modern history.

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The Senegalese couple are undergoing a period of profound recomposition. The signs of this crisis are now visible in all social categories: multiplication of separations, conflicting divorces, financial mistrust between spouses, decline in marital solidarity, psychological violence, inheritance tensions, cross accusations of ingratitude, domination or exploitation, weakening of parental authority, feeling of loneliness and mental suffering.

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Artificial intelligence is not an additional medical innovation comparable to the arrival of a new imaging device or a new drug. It acts as a transversal technology, capable of simultaneously modifying disease detection, the interpretation of examinations, the formulation of differential diagnoses, the customisation of treatments, the continuous monitoring of patients, pharmaceutical research, the organisation of hospitals, medical documentation, the training of professionals and the relationship between the patient, the doctor and the care system.

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Artificial intelligence is entering a general diffusion phase. After mainly automated industrial operations and specialized calculations, it is now able to produce text, code, images, synthesises, recommendations and analyses. It thus penetrates the heart of many intellectual professions: law, finance, health, education, computer science, marketing, media, administration and engineering.

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social violence does not always make any noise. It does not overturn governments. It does not necessarily provoke demonstrations. She doesn't always leave written traces. It slides into salons, offices, office cars, bourgeois houses, administrations, businesses, ceremonies, schools — and in the ordinary relations between those who have and those who do not.

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Elections can be held, ballots can be printed, transparent ballot boxes can be installed, observers can be called, results can be proclaimed and democracy can be spoken of. But one question remains: what is the real value of voting when the citizen who exercises it depends materially on the person whom he must judge?

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They are societies where one first respects the rule, then the one who incarnates. There are others where man is first respected, then only the rules he agrees to let exist. In much of contemporary Africa, the relationship to power is still trapped in this second logic. The head precedes the institution. The person absorbs the function. Authority is confused with rank.

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