Empowerment has suddenly become a catchword for tokenistic handouts in African representational politics these days.

During campaigns, our politicians and representatives would always say: ‘I am going there to empower my people’, but do they really understand the broader impact of the word? Or how does the use of that term serves to elude, confuse, mislead or hinder the realization of effective and true representation?

Empowerment goes beyond the narrow practice of distributing ‘handouts’ to political vassals and loyal friends.

‘Handouts’ may serve but what happens when the generative sources, their regenerative capacities and operational structures for those ‘handouts’ no longer exist (as in when the representative fails to make it to the 7th term?

Empowerment is a byword for ‘power’, which must follow certain processes.

If a citizen can wake up in critical reflection of why government exists/should exist. If he or she is capable of seeing and utilizing opportunities around him or her or being able to expand his or her horizons of possibilities. If he or she can truly participate in processes that claim to govern him or her. These are few examples of situations when empowerment is said to take root.

Empowerment fundamentally implies those in charge in advocating, making and implementing laws, policies and programs should focus on enhancing my capacity to have command over critical resources such as knowledge-quality knowledge (to be able to make realistic sense of my world, relationships and values, etc); being able to manage and have control over my life, values, beliefs, attitudes, and being able to adjust them where necessary; and being in a position to access the resources in the system (intellectual, physical and financial, etc).