Democracy and Economy to change challenges into sound prospects
In an eventful but sensational political scene in recent years, Senegal elected a vibrant and young president Bassirou Diomaye Faye on the 24th of March 2024. For the western part of Africa marred with unprecedented growth in the undemocratic way of seizing power and for the entire continent that keeps losing hope in peaceful transition of powers Faye’s election marks a hopeful sound prospect Africans never gave up to see. The electrifying experience gives a feeling of the dawning of a new Africa and departing its past. Yet this case represents only a patternless incident and will remain just a non-consequential practice for a foreseeable period as the larger Africa drags its legs. In this short piece, an attempt has been made to briefly analyze the challenges and prospects of Africa’s political stability through the democracy and economic lenses.
Challenges to Africa’s Contemporary Political Stability
The Democracy Thing
Empirically ingrained studies converge in asserting democratic states are peaceful internally. Peace prevails among democratic states, they pointed out. Under the theory of democratic peace, the assumption calls, hence, for the adoption of democracy by all sovereign states so that the planet enjoys lasting peace. If true, Africa needs to be the first along the line to genuinely adopt democracy. This is because peace is what has for decades been missed in the land due to undemocratic behaviors. But, undemocratic countries spread across the globe are largely peaceful and economically prosperous. This is to argue that striving to establish expansive democratic rules across the continent is key and one thing. But this should inseparably be coupled with aggressive measures to strengthen constitutional and institutional capabilities equally present both in politically stable and economically advanced democratic and undemocratic countries. Despite being undemocratic in their features authoritative governments have effectively utilized institutional capacities to keep the countries relatively peaceful and economically prosperous. Africa as a continent corrigibly failed in this aspect.
The Economy Thing
As we live in a contemporary world where state actors’ interdependence reached a point of no return an important question to ask comes forth. Africa, however, has noticeably been neither strong inwardly nor active in the global economic realm, since independence, which questions the viability of interdependence cliché. And, this has been contributing to negatively affecting the continent’s political stability by far and large, only exacerbating after Covid-19.
Poor signs of economic progress, if not stagnant, characterize contemporary Africa leading to a significant burgeon in political instabilities particularly in western and eastern African regions. Reports have that Congo, once again, is entering into a quagmire as M23 has reportedly been re-picked arms fighting against the central government in the eastern DRC. Coups are on the increase again. In an alarming trend, and only over the last four years Africa experienced fourteen military coups including unsuccessful attempts. Sudan’s forgotten civil war displaced over 7 million people and claimed over 10 thousand people and no end in sight one year since it started in April 2023.
An empirical study that analyzed some 52 countries in Africa between 1980 and 2013 revealed that the continent remained relatively politically stable impacted by better economic performances and greater growth rate than the years before. Despite changes in growth in a few African countries over the years since then, the continent has ceased demonstrating impressive economic growth. World financial institutions report Africa’s weak economic growth marred with an abating debt crisis, soaring inflation, and spiraling food insecurity.
Prospects of Africa’s Political Stability
Africa’s prospect of political stability hinged on the accomplishments of democratic exercises and economic prosperities the continent is expected to bring about.
As for economic prosperity, the continent’s hope to grow and grow consequentially looks promising due to the combined factors arising from the richness of its geography and young human capacity to translate this into a practical and sustainable change. Africa is home to some 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves, eight percent of the world’s natural Gas, and 12 percent of the world’s oil reserves. The continent has 40 percent of the world’s gold and up to 90 percent of its chromium and platinum. The largest reserves of cobalt, diamonds, platinum, and uranium in the world are in Africa. It holds 65 percent of the world’s arable land and 10 percent of the planet’s internal renewable freshwater source. This statistical description is according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) putting Africa as one of the key raw material suppliers to the world’s manufacturers.
For long, however, Africa has been not able to effectively control its rich resources as the surplus profiting industries manage their productions and the wider market chains. A huge imbalance between Africa as inputs owner and giant industries as product suppliers has now become under genuine-looking questioning the former started raising. Africa supplies 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans, Ivory Coast and Ghana take the lead along with Nigeria and Cameroon. Only Ghana, a statistic informs that, controls 45 percent of the world’s cocoa. Such a powerful presence in the world market is no longer ignored by African countries.
An exemplary case to demonstrate this could be the Ghanaians’ leading measure they took on their cocoa, one of the main driving forces behind their GDP against Switzerland which aimed to bring to an end the brutally exploitative neo-colonial business behavior. Ghana has grown into a strict role player that enables the nation to fully control the cocoa resources in a way that brings significant and sustainable change for over 700,000 cocoa farmers. As such the way to secure the prospect of political stability in wider Africa begins by regaining the power only chocolate-making rich countries and a handful of greedy firms that trade it.
As for democracy and its contribution to Africa’s political stability, the prospect appears promising as well. At the heart of the recent exemplary democratic practices that led to the election of Senegalese young leadership lies the relatively effective functioning of democratic institutions and the huge trust of the wider citizens in them. This indicates a smooth but slow move away from the long-held dominance of violent-seeking politicians and military apparatuses to civilians and low-abiding politicians' role domination. But this needs strong and multilayers of efforts apart from elections so lasting changes will engulf the entire continent and political stability holds firm establishments.
References
Political instability and economic growth in Africa: https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/ijoeps/v13y2019i1d10.1007_s42495-018-0008-1.html
Overview – World Economic Situation and Prospects 2024: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2024/01/overview-world-economic-situation-and-prospects-2024/
Key Takeaways from Senegal’s Presidential Election: https://africacenter.org/spotlight/key-takeaways-from-senegals-presidential-election/
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