Imperialism and Democratic Consolidation in Sub-Saharan Africa

• In Event: Issues of Democracy in Africa

Abstract

That democracy has been embraced, willingly or not, by much of the Sub-Saharan countries post-independence is not in doubt. In fact, the wind of democratic change that engulfed these countries led many to contend that the 1990s represented a benchmark year of democratic development for Africa because, for the first time, African government leaders took initiatives to share power with others in society. African leaders created political space for debating reforms and in some countries, these debates resulted in policies that were formally implemented. Africa took the first steps toward what many have christened “the second independence, liberation or Africa’s springtime” (Hyden and Bratton, 1992; Huntington, 2010; Ng’oma, 2016; Ricart-Huguet, 2019).
Regrettably however, this wave of political reforms has stymied, atrophied and yielded dismal results, with democratic experiments in most African countries having failed, or tottering towards failure many decades later. Through constitutional coup d’etats, we see African presidents refusing to leave office after their term limits. For example, in 2019, six out of ten living longest ruling heads of states were from sub-Saharan Africa. Cases in point include Cameroon’s President Paul Biya who has been in office since 1975 and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni since 1986. Presidents of this ilk bend the rules so that they can stay in office for one or more additional terms (Ricart-Huguet, 2019).

This worrisome trend is reversing the seeming march of African countries towards democratic consolidation. By 2019, there were fewer democracies in Africa than was the case in the 1990s. 20 years ago as many of its countries such as Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, etc.) experienced democratic truncations in the form military coup d’etats, while the Central Africa sub-region remains plagued with the highest concentration of autocratic regimes with the three longest-serving presidents in the world in Equatorial Guinea (41 years), Cameroon (38 years), and Congo-Brazzaville (38 years). What explains this bothersome trend?

While highly elucidating explanations have been advanced to account for this, with some locating the failure in internal or external environments of these countries (Bratton and van de Walle, 1997; Makulilo, 2016; Pelizzo, et. al. 2018; Fomunyoh, 2020), a much more compelling explanation, this paper argues, lies not in single, but multi-factor explanations that more successfully capture the myriad conditions under which democratic experiments in Sub-Saharan Africa fail. More specifically, the argument is advanced here that these democracies are failing to consolidate because of a) neo-imperialism which is expressed in the economic policies of the West towards these countries that are grounded in the neo-liberal orthodoxy; and b) the absence of what we christen as “democratic conditionality” – that is, the requisite socio-economic, cultural, educational and development that undergird and sustain democratic practice. This absence, ironically, is compounded by the very large presence of factors that undermine democratic practice – weak and ineffective states whose business, it seems, is to preside over the liquidation of the resources necessary for democratic sustenance by avaricious leaders (Shabbir, 2017; Fagbadebo, 2019). Unless these factors are re-visited, serious democratic experiments in Africa will remain a chimera. At best, they may amount to smokescreens orchestrated by African governments to secure political approval of their regimes by the West which, it can be argued, is foisting democratic governance on these African countries (Wood, 2020).

Predicated upon two years of primary research in Africa, this argument is substantiated through detailed comparative analysis of democratic transition experiences across Sub-Saharan Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

Author

• Raphael Obi Ogom, DePaul University