The absence of a functioning state in many parts of West Africa has an infuriating effect on ordinary citizens, reports correspondent Bram Posthumus.

A businessman is talking into his mobile phone. As the conversation heats up, talking becomes shouting. ‘No, you listen to me! You listen to me! If this doesn’t go as planned the whole thing’s off! You understand? You understand!?’

Half the terrace hears the high volume altercation. When the ‘conversation’ is over, the businessman – European, receded hairline, jaw set at angles even more square than usual - angrily slams down his poor little mobile on the table. ‘Little shit. Thinks he knows this business better than me.’

Over coffee, I am reading the local paper. It tells me that angry residents of a nearby neighbourhood have been without electricity for more than a week. They got wind of a visit by the minister for energy and decided to teach him a lesson. They took him hostage until they got a reasonably solid promise that their lights and fridges would start working again – soon.

It reminds me of another story in another electricity-starved part of town. No lights there, the exception being the compound belonging to a government minister. So one fine evening, the youth in the area got together with their catapults and their stones and took out the offending ministerial lamps one by one.

Later the same day, I am walking down the rather loosely regulated streets of the capital. Tyres screech behind me – one brief moment of nothing - and yes: impact. I turn around and see one of those ubiquitous Chinese motorcycles splayed out on the street. Its front wheel has disappeared under a yellow taxi. Fresh shards of glass are lying everywhere.

The driver leaves his taxi and makes a beeline for the motorcyclist who has managed to get up. A crowd has already gathered and the scene of the accident quickly turns into an arena, with two gladiators. They point fingers, they shout, they angrily lurch at one another but just before the fight is on an army officer and a policeman intervene. ‘Doing something useful for a change,’ I hear myself saying aloud.

That may sound uncharitable, but I have seen too many instances of abuse of power by countless uniformed men and women. Nothing gets my temperature up faster than what Shakespeare has called ‘the insolence of office’: the idea that just because you have a position in the state hierarchy you now have license to harass citizens and visitors, humiliate them, steal their money and even arrest them if they complain. This is routine in too many parts of West Africa.

What binds all this anger together? I would say that it's the absence of a functioning state. Your business is not safe unless you have the right connections. You don’t have electricity because the utility does not function. You don’t have recourse to the law in case of a problem and therefore you settle your own scores, while those that are supposed to uphold the law are too busy lining their pockets.

In parts of the world where order can largely be taken for granted, you may have a nice ideological debate between, say, adherents of socialist-style state interference and latter-day libertarians. But in places like Guinea (were the scenes above are from), or the DR Congo, or any other place without a functioning state, the issue is practical. How to build even halfway credible institutions from near-disorder? There are no smart answers. Little wonder, then, that so many people are angry and upset.