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This episode examines how the power logics observed at the top of the African state reproduce, on a smaller scale, in administrations, businesses, families, communities and ordinary social relations.
African power is often analyzed through the figure of the president, minister, party leader or senior official. Yet domination is not just at the top. It reproduces in a multitude of local structures, following a logic comparable to that of fractal figures: the same form is repeated on all scales.
The political leader reproduces his practices in the administration; the director reproduces them in his undertaking; the framework imposes them on its employees; the notable transposes them into his community; the head of the household exercises them in the domestic space. At each level, power tends to customize itself, stage itself and demand loyalty, deference and dependence.
This organization is based on a genuine « belly policy », where access to resources, jobs, markets, promotions or protections depends less on impersonal rules than on proximity to the authority.
The episode thus shows that authoritarianism is not only a matter for political institutions. It is also rooted in ordinary social behaviour, in the cult of the leader, in the search for protection, in clientelism, between oneself and the daily reproduction of hierarchies.
The democratization of the continent cannot therefore be limited to the organisation of elections. It implies a profound transformation of the relationship between power, authority, responsibility and dignity, both in the State and in society.
