Real Democracy: The True Direction for Sustainable Development in Africa
Africa is an underdeveloped continent. Africa has the world’s poorest population and the
most ill and food insecure. Its GDP have stayed the same for decades or at best increase
slightly while other continents, developed and developing, have skyrocketed in global
economic competiveness. A noteworthy characteristic of the continent is the “habit” of
military coups (especially post-independence) and high levels of government corruption.
Is democracy a prerequisite for development in Africa or can authoritarian regimes
sustain a reasonably stable development state regardless of ever going towards a democracy?
In this paper, I argue that it is definitely the earlier case.
First, what is development about? Development is how we can mobilize resources,
acquire the capacity to utilize them, and allocating these resources appropriately (Gatune
104). Therefore, we can see that not being able to efficiently use your resources does not lead
to development. Resources are as good as dirt if they are misused or ignored. Resources can
be natural resources, chemicals in the Earth or geographical regions, or more importantly the
human resources, population of a certain location that want to improve their life. From this
follows that the only real development is one that affects the whole population positively,
also known as broad-based development.
Recent history showed that dictatorships in Africa could not develop institutions for
broad-based development. This is because they primarily answer a small group of elites,
especially the army and the judiciary. Therefore, there is a direct incentive to establish
patronage systems with the elites. Such systems are based on clientelistic relationships.
Regimes exchange goods and services for continues support from the elite. This care about
only a small group creates many problematic effects. The most important is inadequate
other two problems to be even worse, because of the lack of trained people. This continues to
be a viscous cycle in the most corrupt regimes.
There is an important observation using an economic indicator called “capital flight”.
This indicator measures how much capital is taken out of an economy. Usually in highly
developing/developed countries where investments are to grow, the amount of capital taken
out is small. However, if a country in unstable and financial system are not developed,
investors are likely to take out capital of the economy. As shown in Nega’s and Schneider’s
paper the top ten countries where capital flight happens are also authoritarian/not free
regimes. What is more surprising is that they include three of the most aid-receiving countries
in the past few years, Congo, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. This lost capital is a high cost of
dictatorship.
Speaking of aid, we can be confused as to why the West continue to support
dictatorships. Well there are two reasons. One that is openly said by Western governments
and one that implied. Western government believe that modernization will lead to democracy.
This ideology entails that no democracy can be achieved unless some economic growth is
achieved. They believe through time authoritarian regimes will transform to democracies.
The implied reason is the fact that dictatorships are “nurtured” under theWest’s aid to be
loyalists and hence will achieve their targets in the area. An important thing to notice about
the Arab Spring is that not only it happened in poor countries like Yemen, but happened in
richer ones like Libya, Egypt, and Syria, and even Gulf oil-rich Bahrain. The differences in
economies is large. Therefore, this helps to prove that economic wealth does not cause
democratization in principal. However, what was common in all cases of the Arab Spring was
the presence of a disaffected youth population with high unemployment or high
discrimination and poor prospects. In other words, the dictatorships cannot longer continue to
As Rod Alence points out, there are doubts about the few democracies that actually
exist in Africa. A first argument says that in Africa there is a general lack of structural
prerequisites for sustainable democracy, such as industrialization, mass education, large
middle class, and united identity. Instead, Africa has a low socioeconomic development and
is highly ethnically fragmented. While this may be true, the conditions are very much
improving. A very strong example was when Nigeria back in 2007 when the elections went
so undemocratic that critics expected Nigeria to reverse to undemocratic means. However,
just this year 2015, Nigeria passed power in one of the most democratic and fair elections in
recent African democracy, which suggests Africa is on a good track. Nigeria and South
Africa are countries where a good form of governance and democracy exit and we all hope
that other African nations follow their lead.
One method where we can help Africa democratize, other than from within it, is
through setting political conditions on any loan or aid given to those countries. Such
conditions may be encourage government to implement some form of governance reforms.
To conclude, I sum my paper in the following four phrases:
ď‚· Autocracies will always prevent their support networks from collapsing even
in harsh economic conditions, which may even send the poor into obsolete.
ď‚· Having a real democratic process that promotes accountability of the
government is the only way to make sure the people in power are always
looking for the well-being of the populace.
ď‚· Autocracies may remain stable but only until the average citizen does not feel
ď‚· Real democracies naturally form decentralized governance. This allows much
better use of the capital and mobilization of resources across the whole
country, achieving broad-based development. Autocracies will never achieve
this on the long run because the capital and resources are exclusively in hands
Works Cited
Alence, Rod. "Democracy and Development in Africa."Democracy and Development in
Africa. Web.
Gatune, Julius. "Africa's Development beyond Aid: Getting Out of the Box." Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 632.Perspectives on Africa and
the World (2010): 103-20. JSTOR. Web.
Nega, Berhanu, and Geoff Schneider. "Things Fall Apart: Dictatorships, Development, and
