Western Democracy in Africa as a Failed Project: Which Way Forward?

Abstract

The role of democracy in societal transformation and nation-building in Sub-Saharan Africa has been compromised by political and social strictures created during more than three decades of autocratic rule of most countries that still underline the practical and moral workings of the state today. Western democracy remains mired in rigging cleavages that find expression in parochial tendencies ranging from divide and rule to ethnicism and to regionalism being orchestrated by the state’s political elites and those loyal to the ruling regime in a neo-patrimonial manner. As a result, the ability to mobilise all and sundry towards a meaningful democratic culture and development is limited. In this context good governance has remained, for the vast majority of Africans, illusory. With the end of the Cold War which characterised world politics since 1945, the United States of America and Europe have descended on the continent and re-launched a crusade for democracy without paying any attention to the structures which could harness meaningful democratic culture and development. This essay focuses on the dynamics that have impeded the development of western democracy in Africa. It interrogates even the raison d’etre of such a western buzzword with regard to meaningful development in most African countries. Does Africa really need western democracy to cure her developmental malady? This essay, while working on the argument that western democracy has botched woefully in most parts of the continent, attempts to proffer some suggestions, which if implemented would launch most African countries towards meaningful democratic culture.