I have to admit that the Wikileaks saga distracted me. I thought 2011 would be the year that access to information and freedom of the press pundits would fight it out with state supremacy wonks. But I was wrong. This is the year of the citizen.

Actually the year 2010 ended with the election stalemate in Cote D’Ivoire, but I wasn’t paying adequate attention. Only when the French president Nicolas Sarkozy offered outgoing President Gbagbo an ultimatum, my ears pricked. I heard a lot from the opposing camps, news agencies, bloggers, regional bodies; nothing from civil society. No demonstrations, no violence; more like acquiescence. But it’s their right to remain impartial.

Unlike in Tunisia, Egypt, Southern Sudan, and Libya. How did we not see this coming? It is no longer possible to systematically deprive millions of people of sustainable livelihoods and still claim legitimacy of leadership.

Who would have thought that the state apparatus would run into opposition with civil society, as in Egypt? Information technology has facilitated the rebirth of the citizen class. It has provided us with a platform to communicate with, scold, and renounce our leaders.

We are moving into an era in which the state is transformed to manifest the will of its constituents. This is indeed a challenge to its traditional authority, its autonomy, its supremacy. We’ve had the nation-state; the multi-party state; the military-state. We have finally arrived at the original model of governance, which we have all read about in Rousseau’s social contract, the citizen-state.

Citizens have come of age. The right of participation in public policy is also an obligation. No longer can we prod along, blaming our leaders for our economic woes, without undertaking sufficient efforts to express our desires, our expectations for change. The balance of power has shifted to the popular voice; the voice of the poor, the disenfranchised, the neglected. And this voice has made it clear that leaders are public servants, not royalty.

African citizens in 18 countries will have their chance to realise their right to self-determination in 2011, among them includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.

This is the year that we refine our perspectives of what democracy is all about. It actually isn’t just about elections. It isn’t just about the freedom of expression and the right of access to information. It’s about civic engagement. Citizens are giving form to the societies they would like to live in, like those expressing frustration in Tunisia; those expressing defiance in Egypt; those expressing the need to direct their own futures like in Southern Sudan. How appropriate then, on a continent renowned for its relentless but affable dictators, that Africa is going to bring these lessons to the world!

At some point in the Cote D’Ivoire stand-off, a spokesman for Mr. Ouattara, Patrick Achi, was quoted as saying that there are three levers that the diplomatic community uses to shake-up regimes: finance, diplomacy and the military. Well, it seems there are actually four, and Africa has reminded the world of its greatest resource, the essence underpinning political systems, the citizen.

Written by Nancy Dubosse