The Future of Democracy in Africa
Can Democracy Survive in Africa?
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If democracy is to survive in Africa, then Africans should work assiduously to plant and water the elements of liberty and freedom in every nation on the continent. The demographic pattern of Africa today depicts a huge youth bulge where the population of the youth far exceeds all other age categories. Africa has a median age of 19.7 years, the youngest population in the world. To me, this skyrocketing youth bulge in Africa should be a springboard to firmly plant democratic rule all over the continent, unleash unprecedented prosperity in Africa, and transform the continent of poverty, misery, and want. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo speaking to the London Financial Times, brought this reality to life when he correctly predicted: Young Nigerians, who make up the bulk of the population in a country with a median age of 18, could change the course of history, ‘you have the numbers, get up, stand up, and make your numbers count.” {Africa Center for Strategic Studies, Daily Media Review, January 24, 2023} Indeed, former President Obasanjo’s words should echo throughout the length and breadth of Africa because the surging youth population can “change the course of history,” as they have the numbers to plant democratic governance all over the continent of Africa firmly. The youth in Sudan were instrumental in the uprising that toppled the 30-year autocratic and repressive regime of Omar al-Bashir and now must endeavor to plant the firm roots of democratic government in Sudan. But if democracy is to survive in Africa, the youth must redouble their efforts to stem the tide of autocracy in Africa and increase democratic governance replete with liberty and freedom for their oppressed citizens because, in many parts of Africa, the triumph of democracy is on retreat as Mo Ibrahim Foundation of governance reminds us about “democratic backsliding that threatens to reverse decades of progress made in Africa. Mo Ibrahim Index of Governance notes: The phenomenon of coup d’états that was common in the ‘80s seems to have become fashionable again in certain parts of Africa. {Krista Larson: report: Much of Africa Less Safe, democratic than in 2012. A.P. news.com January 25, 2023} Aljazeera News Network further reported: “Africa’s progress in human and economic development has slowed against a backdrop of “widespread democratic backsliding” and worsening security in the last three years.” The paper said: “There had been a marginal improvement in good governance across Africa since 2012, but the trend had “flat-lined since 2019. Improvements in human development and economic foundation are undermined by an increasingly perilous security situation and widespread democratic backsliding. Governments have been increasingly prone to infringe on rights, curb freedom of expression and association, and impose restrictions on civic space. {Aljazeera: Democracy “backsliding” has slowed Africa’s development: study https://www.aljazeera.com/news 2023/1/25 democracy backsliding: January 25, 2023.} Some democracies are backsliding or eroding in some African nations partly because of the spate of military coups, democratically elected leaders deliberately subverting democratic norms, the gradual encroachment of autocratic governments, and the grotesque and abnormal inequality of income and standard of living among the populace, and their distrust of some of their contemporary democratic leaders bent on amassing fabulous wealth through public corruption. Additionally, the Economist Intelligence Unit has characterized the prevailing democratic practice in some African nations as a hybrid. A Hybrid democratic regime presupposes that the practice of democracy is a combination of freedoms and authoritarian regimes in the governance of the nation. A hybrid system may hold periodic elections but repress its citizens. In a Hybrid political regime, they’re, among other things: Corruption is endemic in the public sector, as evidenced by the scores of the nation’s Corruption Perception Index produced by Transparency International The incumbent government harasses and maintains political pressure on opposition politicians The media in a hybrid regime are not entirely free from government harassment and scrutiny. The ownership of media is government-controlled or owned by politicians or people affiliated with the dominant political parties. The democratic political cultures in a hybrid regime are woefully underdeveloped, and in most cases, there is low political participation. In 2022 the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked some African nations as a hybrid. These nations include Benin, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Gambia. The Economists Intelligent Unit {EIU} also characterized certain democratic Regimes as flawed. In a flawed democratic system, according to EIU, the regime enjoys free and fair elections and may enjoy basic civil liberties but have issues with media freedom because the government in power tends to infringe on media freedom. Such flawed regimes suppress political opposition and government critics. Some of the democratic flaws include widespread corruption, manipulation of opposition parties, and vast economic inequalities in the nation. Some flawed democracies have issues with the functioning of the government. In 2022 the EIU identified the following African nations as flawed democracies: Ghana, Namibia, South Africa, and Namibia. What is Full Democracy? According to the European Center for Populism Studies: “Full democracies are nations where civil liberties and fundamental political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and diverse and independent media. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.” {European Center for Populism Studies. Https://www.populismstudies.org/vocabularly/full-democracy}. Kwame A. Insaidoo Bay Shore, New York March 23, 2023
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About the Book
Can Democracy survive in Africa, and if it does, what will be the future of democracy in Africa in a world that is increasingly characterized by a wave of authoritarianism spearheaded by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi-Jinping’s China, and their minions? That Russia is the citadel of authoritarianism is evidenced by Russia’s unprovoked brutal attack on the independent sovereign nation of Ukraine with an ostensible motive of depriving the citizens of Ukraine of their democratic rights and imposing dictatorship on the good people of Ukraine. If democracy, freedom, and liberty is to survive in any part of Africa, then all African nations should unanimously join the free nations to vehemently condemn Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked brutal invasion of Ukraine and the carnage it has wrought on the innocent children, women, and men of the nation. Furthermore, freedom-loving African nations must simultaneously send an unambiguous message to Xi-Jinping, the Communist leader of China, to desist from imposing autocracy on the peace-loving democratic society of Taiwan. For many years African nations have been impoverished and oppressed by puppet regimes in Africa imposed from outside the continent, who did and continue to do the bidding of their foreign masters. African leaders know or must know that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is to play a similar high-stakes game of installing a puppet regime that Moscow can easily manipulate to the detriment of the vast majority of Ukrainians. Putin is pursuing a similar pernicious policy in Africa to install puppet regimes and extend his autocratic values in Central Africa, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, and others. The future of democracy in Africa hinges in part on Putin exploiting the so-called Russia-Africa Summit to circumvent Africa’s march to consolidate democracy and freedom on the continent. Africa’s freedom lovers should seek to pressure Vladimir Putin to unilaterally abandon his brutal and merciless invasion of an unprovoked sovereign state of Ukraine or else should refuse to be a party to the so-called Russia-Africa Summit.
About the Author
Kwame A. Insaidoo was born in Ghana in West Africa, where he grew up and attended primary, middle, and secondary schools, and enrolled at the University of Ghana, studying African Studies for a brief period of time. Kwame Insaidoo grew up under autocratic and military governments. Under the autocratic governments, his parents, uncles, town folks, and many of the citizens were physically fearful of speaking out against government policies because numerous government security agents were lurking in the shadows spying on the citizens to ensure they abide by the government’s draconian rules and arbitrarily locked up those who spoke against the governments. When the military governments came to power through violent military coups, they ruled by military decrees, some of which were arbitrarily dated back to three years before their coups. The military ruled with an iron fist, heavy-handed, barbarous, brutal, and cruel, issued vicious threats against the citizens, and was riding roughshod over the people. Some of the soldiers took the law into their hands and roamed through the drinking bars in cities arresting single women and shaving their heads with broken bottles. Some of the university students perceived to be anti-government were detained and given lashes by government security forces. Yes, to live under military and autocratic governments was a fearful ordeal. While attending secondary schools in Ghana, the authorities crammed the students’ brains with socialist and Marxist propaganda information; and books from North Korea’s leader Kim-Il-Sung were freely distributed to the students. When Kwame was a student at the University of Ghana studying Political Science, Socialist, and Marxist dogma was further pumped into the heads of the students through propaganda mechanisms. Democracy was a dirty word and was equated with both colonialism and imperialism and was relegated to a lower level of our studies. When Kwame won an international academic scholarship to study in the United States of America, the study of democracy gained front and center of his studies. He saw the immense benefits of democracy firsthand – it had tremendously developed the mighty United States of America. True, indeed, the people of the nation he came across were not timid but resourceful, bold, and free to express their ideas, and had the courage to experiment with their bold ideas, which have transformed their neighborhoods, communities, and their nation at large to become a dominant superpower and the giant among nations of the world. Kwame was so enthralled with his study of democracy that as an undergraduate student at Missouri State University when he was elected President of the Foreign Students Association, he put his study of democracy into practice. He formed the Social Committee as a replica of parliament to debate and vote on all policies before they were implemented. He vowed never to have an autocratic bone in his policies. During his final year at the university, as the informal leader of the African Students Union on campus, he had heated debates on the political situations of various African nations, the government domination of their people, and the helplessness and poverty they have created in their respective African nations. When he finally enrolled in graduate school at New York University to pursue his Master’s degree in Political Science, he benefited from the various professors working at the United Nations, while some were former government officials from their respective nations, who educated the students on the practical realities of the state of democracy in many contemporary African nations. Kwame also taught Social Studies and government for three years at Lower East Side International Community School in New York City, where he spent time teaching the basic rudiments of Democracy, the government of the people, by the people, and for the people to the students. And so the objective of this work is to teach the basic rudiments of democracy to the youth of Africa to encourage them to build democratic governments all over the continent of Africa and to ensure that never again should any form of autocratic governance be allowed in any part of the continent.