Redefining Democracy: A Path to Africa's Bright Future

Cyril Obi, a Nigerian academic in the United States, has emphasized that African countries cannot realize their full potential until democracy is reframed in light of African norms, values, and ambitions.

Obi emphasized that Africa was going through what he called "de-democratization," saying that the region's current democratic traditions had not permitted advancement.

Obi bemoaned the fact that, despite the adoption of democracy by African nations, recent coup actions in some African countries had demonstrated a decline in the acceptability of democracy in his inaugural lecture, "Caught Between De-democratization and Re-democratization: Grappling with Africa's Complex Conjunctures through the Lens of Political Dialectics," at the University of the Free State in South Africa.

Although 66% of Africans voted against military control, the professor of social science pointed to a recent research that showed a sharp 11% decrease in opposition to military administration compared to previous years.

He blamed extensive corruption, political manipulation, state control, and the exploitation of the legal system to rig elections for the deteriorating democratic practices in the African region.


"One of the main causes of the trend towards de-democratization is the manipulation of multi-party elections," Obi stated. To show how this has fueled what I refer to as pseudo-democratic governments, we could give a few examples. Among other places, you can use viewpoints from Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Equatorial Guinea.

"However, a Nigerian international human rights scholar named Chidi Odinkalu has published a new book that discusses an intriguing trend: the judicialization of elections. He characterizes this as a situation in which courts are increasingly being instrumentalized in a way that uses the appearance of norm-abiding processes to engineer authoritarian conditions into being."

He went on to say that Africa needs to abandon the ideals of Western democracy and concentrate on concepts that are in line with the aspirations of its young people.

A paradigm shift grounded in a thorough understanding of the shifting social dynamics and the development of a political dialectic are necessary to reverse the current trend towards democratization in Africa. This will enable African citizens to re-democratize the continent on terms that will fundamentally alter political structures and norms that place a higher priority on freedom, equality, and peace.

"Africa's young, the burgeoning push for re-democratization, and a generational power shift hold the key to the continent's future. Re-democratization will necessitate shifting away from an automotive paradigm of choiceless democracy that has been rapidly surpassed by social struggles, cutting-edge technologies, regional, and global transformation, as well as critically analyzing the forces of change that are emerging.

One could argue that this is not the first instance of re-democratization in Africa. After all, the third wave of democracy that resulted from the fall of ministry administrations and one-party states in the 1990s and their replacement by elected multi-party states may be regarded as re-democratization.

"But an attempt to organically grow a fit-for-purpose African democracy that can engage and embrace global partnerships that respect the validity of the contribution of African knowledge systems, civilizations, and institutions to the democratic ideal globally," Obi emphasized, highlighting that the push to redefine democracy should not be viewed as a pan-Africanist idea.

He pushed African academics to do more than just convert information; they also needed to communicate and use it for the benefit of the African continent.

Obi came to the conclusion that "Africa will have to fight to break the cycle of the continent's caricature liberal democratic experiments repeatedly birthing and dying." A paradigmatic democratic revolution that emerged from the fertile soil of Africa's struggles, ideals, and imaginations will be able to engulf the continent after the split.