Democracy for Breakfast: Unveiling Mirage Democracy in Contemporary Africa

Chapter 1 - Introduction: Context, Concepts and Substance

3 Chapter 1 Introduction: Context, Concepts and Substance Overview Concepts lie at the core of social science theory and methodology. They provide substance to theories; they form the basis of measurement; and, they influence the selection of cases for any study. One of the greatest challenges facing the social sciences today is the task of cultivating a closer connection between theoretical concepts and empirical analysis. The task of this chapter is therefore to connect theoretical concepts of market-driven globalization and democratization in Africa. Introduction The talk of the day in Africa nowadays is democracy. Nobody cares to ask: What democracy? Whose democracy? Democracy for what? Information gleaned from World Bank Data refer to the most recent year available between 1990 and 2005 and UNESCO Institute of Statistics, 2006 as well as UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children 2009 attests to the misery of Africa. This is demonstrated by challenges faced by the entire continent. Data gleaned from East Africa as an example give us a picture as follows: Poverty x 141,000,000 people in East Africa live on less than $2US/day. x Typical family has 6 children. x Cost of education remains the largest obstacle: $750 full board, $30 uniform/shoes, $30 school supplies. x Low innovation and entrepreneurship contributes to high unemployment rates and dependency on foreign aid. 4 Access to Education x East Africa has high initial primary enrollment rates (>90%), but 30-40% of students leave before they complete primary school. x In 2007, only 25% of elementary school students went on to high school because of the expenses. x In 2006, 101 million children – more than half of them girls – were not attending primary school; the majority of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa. x Sexual violence, unsafe school environments and inadequate sanitation disproportionately affect girls’ self-esteem, participation and retention in school. Quality of Education x East Africa struggles to provide quality education and infrastructure as indicated by student-to-teacher ratios, primary completion rates, secondary enrollment, and youth literacy rates. x Student-to-teacher ratios have increased in sub-Saharan Africa due to mandatory enrollment, creating an average ratio of 72 students to 1 teacher. x Four million new primary school teachers are needed in East Africa alone to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015. x Crowded and dilapidated classrooms, coupled with insufficient teaching resources and instructional time, reflect well-below average standard of educational institutions. Advanced learning is impeded due to nonexistent basic math and science materials. The Lure of Democracy in Africa The spread of democratization to and domestic clamors for democracy in Africa as a neoliberal ideology from the early 1990s has presented the most significant political change in the continent since the independence period. Firstly, throughout the continent, significant political liberalization has resulted in the emergence of a free press, opposition parties, independent unions and a multitude of civic organizations autonomous from the state. Officially multi-party electoral democracies have become commonplace. Many people 5 quarrel over the practice of democratic politics. The claim by Western donors that they represented the main motor behind democratization (Decalo 1992) raises heated suspicions in Africa as to whether the democracy being peddled is not another form of recolonialism with an African face. Secondly, “the current paradox of efforts to reinvent democracy in Africa has been that rather than dampening the fires of ethnic conflict, they have often made them more intense and have been accompanied by the explosion of violent conflicts of autochthony (Throup and Hornsby 1998) confrontations of ‘sons of the soil’, that threaten the very bases of social order and cohesion in multi-ethnic societies”. Thirdly, the present African political transition process is occurring within a global context in which neo-liberal economic assumptions are dominant and rampant. These assumptions are having a strong impact on the continent’s own domestic situation. The neo-liberal economic agenda poses a grave threat to the prospects of consolidating democracy and of beginning to address the social and economic crisis in which the majority of Africans find themselves. African socialists view this existential situation as an urgent obligation to identify, unpack and critique this neo-liberal agenda. It is not just socialists who have an interest in criticizing the neo-liberal agenda, but it is particularly from a socialist outlook that a consistent and robust critique is most likely to emerge (Mentan 2012...