The Democratization Process and Structural Adjustment in Africa

Africa’s problems are myriad and complex. However, most scholars of Africa agree that one particular issue that continues to bedevil African countries is how to establish democratic nation-states with institutions that promote economic development, consolidate political harmony and stability, and avoid conflicts through enfranchisement. Many parts of Africa have thus far failed to develop democratic institutions and modes of conducting public affairs. As a result, Africa has been strife-torn for most of the post-colonial era. Rwanda, for example, was the scene of the world’s biggest genocidal massacre in half a century. The Liberian conflict has been going on for over twelve years and affected its neighbors and an entire region. Africa has the largest share of conflicts in the world today. Specifically, “[s]ince 1970, more than 30 wars have been fought in Africa, the vast majority of them intra-State in origin. In 1996 alone, 14 of the 53 countries of Africa were afflicted by armed conflicts, accounting for more than half of all war-related deaths worldwide and resulting in more than 8 million refugees, returnees and displaced persons. The consequences of those conflicts have seriously undermined Africa’s efforts to ensure long-term stability, prosperity and peace for its peoples.”

Conflicts in Africa have typically been rooted in struggles for political power, ethnic privilege, national prestige, and scarce resources. Currently, the vast majority of disputes are domestic in origin. Often, even interstate conflicts are reflections of domestic politics. Governments going through difficult times commonly intervene in conflicts in neighboring states as a means of deflecting public anger away from themselves. As a result of the numerous conflicts raging in Africa, it remains host to the largest population of refugees and displaced persons of any continent. Too many Africans are trapped in conditions of grinding poverty, face daily violence and abuse, suffer under corrupt and oppressive regimes, and are condemned to live their lives in squatter settlements or rural slums with inadequate sanitation, schooling, and health facilities. All of these factors contribute to conflict, poverty, instability, and misery. Underlying the prevalence of conflict in Africa is a crisis of governance and poverty leading to a scramble for resources. Good governance would make a major contribution to the reduction of conflict and poverty. It would do this by creating an environment conducive to sustainable development, thereby reducing poverty—the root cause of many African conflicts. Development seeks to expand choices for all people—women, men, and children of both current and future generations. Development would promote the economic, social, civil, and political realization of human rights through the elimination of poverty and the promotion of human dignity and rights, and by providing equitable opportunities for all through good governance.

Human rights and sustainable development are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. In conditions of prosperity, conflicts are less likely to arise and more likely to be resolved quickly and peacefully if they do arise. As the Secretary General of the United Nations has observed: “[i]n a country where those who hold power are not accountable, but can use their power to monopolize wealth, exploit their fellow citizens and repress peaceful dissent, conflict is all too predictable and investment will be scarce. But in a country where human rights and property rights are protected, where government is accountable, and where those affected by decisions play a part in the decision-making process, there is real hope that poverty can be reduced, conflict avoided, and capital mobilized both at home and from abroad.”

The answer to Africa’s conflict and development quagmire lies in establishing democratic governance in African countries. This calls for a critical examination of the question of governance in Africa, with a view toward identifying the obstacles to its development and toward possible approaches to developing systems of governance that give political space to all groups, thereby avoiding conflict and political instability. The most important legal instrument in the scheme of good governance is the national constitution. Thus, a major part of the answer to Africa’s present predicament lies in the development of constitutions by African countries that will stand the test of time, and that will deliberately structure national institutions in such a way as to ensure that a capable state is created. In the past two decades, Africa has been the scene of constitutional changes unmatched on the continent since the end of European colonialism in the 1960s. In 1989, only five African countries could be described as democracies, but today well over three-quarters of the countries in Africa have adopted democratic systems of governance. However, in many of these countries the advances in democracy, though real, remain fragile and in need of strengthening. Reversals in such countries as Zimbabwe remind us that we should not become complacent and assume that democracy has taken hold on the African continent. Further, the tragedies in Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Congo graphically illustrate the horrendous consequences of failed constitutional arrangements. The future of democracy in Africa is predicated on the development of viable constitutional arrangements that set up practical institutions within which to conduct the business of governance and which foster an environment where peace and development can flourish. Such arrangements will ensure that the exercise of governmental authority is conducted in a predictable, responsible, and legally regulated way, to the satisfaction of civil society and society at large.

This article considers, in the context of globalization, the challenges facing Africa in the democratization process. It first considers security and causes of conflicts in Africa, the economic condition of Africa, and the relationship between governance, conflict, and development. It then seeks to identify some of the key issues that must be addressed in the process of developing durable African constitutions, and the conditions under which constitutions should be developed if they are to be acceptable to the people of the country they are intended to govern. The article argues that good governance can endure only in conditions of relative economic prosperity and development. In conditions of extreme poverty, democracy cannot prosper. To the extent that the process of structural adjustment has increased poverty in Africa, it has undermined the process of democratization and made it much more difficult.