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President Cyril Ramaphosa said last week in Johannesburg during the twentieth anniversary of the African Peer Review Mechanism that democracy in Africa will continue to grow and thrive despite the challenges facing the continent. According to Ramaphosa, there is a resilience in African democracies and there is still great public support for democracy in Africa.
Ramaphosa’s remarks are, of course, very far removed from reality. According to the Freedom House organization, which monitors the state of democracy worldwide annually, there is a general trend away from democracy in Africa. Between August 2020 and November 2023, seven African leaders were overthrown by their own armies in coups. Four of these coups took place alone this year.
Ethiopia, which was once one of the best examples of federal democracy in Africa, threatens to fall back in permanent ethnic violence after the bloody war in Tigray in which hundreds of thousands of people died, and now also a threatening war in the Amhara -region. Earlier this year, a military coup in Sudan was followed by a full-scale civil war with a return to genocide in the western Darfur region.
Civil wars, or at least serious levels of conflict, are currently raging in many other African countries such as Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali, Burkina Faso and Cameroon. Conflict has also increased sharply in Nigeria and Niger over the past year.
There are currently conditions of internal conflict in at least sixteen African countries ranging from the western Sahel through the Horn of Africa, which includes the Chad basin and the major lakes. What is even more worrying, however, is the increase in Islamic terror in Africa and the hold that terrorist groups in various African countries begin to get. Groups that have ties with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State have increased in 2023 in countries such as Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Nigeria and Cameroon.
Voters in various African countries went to the polls in 2023. Voters in the DRC, a country with a population of 100 million people, will go to the ballot box this week in an election that is already characterized by irregularities in the designation of candidates, the voter role and the pressure of ballots. Elections in other African countries such as Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon and Sierra Leone were all characterized by irregularities confirmed by foreign observers.
While developed rich countries such as European countries, Japan, China and South Korea are affected by a shrinking population, the populations of most African countries are increasing sharply. By 2050, more than a quarter of the world’s population will live in Africa.
Yet, despite its enormous natural resources, Africa, giant agricultural potential and availability of enough young people for the labor market, is the most underdeveloped continent on earth.
Nigerian academic Claude Ake said a few years ago that economic development had never been on the agenda of African leaders and governments. According to him, the whole of Africa is characterized by the mere hollow of every institution and resources through corruption and a struggle for power.
According to the Afrobarometer, the percentage of people in Africa who prefer democracy over other forms of government dropped from 75% in 2012 to 66%. Democracy in Africa weakened even further in 2023 and the prospects for 2024 did not look better. Therefore, serious crises from Africa, which can and will also affect the rest of the world, should be expected over the next few years.
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