Democratization trends in Africa and the Role of Emergent Powers in Africa

Dr Ray’s presentation was centred around the primary question: Does Africa’s engagement with emerging powers impact the democratization process in Africa. She agrees with the narrative of the previous presenters that there has been an upsurge in the democratic activities with the third wave of democracy sweeping Africa. Dr Ray also points out the initiatives taken by the regional organization such as the African Union for bringing in political reforms despite the presence of authoritarianism in many African countries. She also highlights the role of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development), which is a collective effort by the African Countries in bringing about democratization and constitutional values in Africa. This effort of the NEPAD has been successful to the extent where many Heads of States in Africa have demitted offices and brought in democratization peacefully. Dr Ray claims that there is a trend emerging where the number of authoritarian regimes is decreasing and backs her claim by citing the Freedom House data of 2017 which shows that there has been a considerable amount of reduction in the number of authoritarian regimes. Dr Ray further points out that an emerging trend concerning participatory democracy is the conduct of elections. There are internal as well as external factors that are responsible for this trend according to her. The United Nations, IMF, African Union and other agencies have been at the forefront of inducing democratic changes. Though holding elections is seen as a positive trend in the direction towards democratization, there are doubts over the credibility of the elections. The prospect of aid has also led many countries like Ghana, Congo, Benin and Senegal to adopt political reforms in their countries. Although many African countries are moving from a single-party system to a multiple party system, authoritarianism still exists. Dr Ray briefly mentions that there exists a link between the MNCs and the non-democratic regimes which hinders the democratization process in Africa. She then talks about the engagement of emerging powers from Asia with Africa. She says that the engagement of the Asian states in Africa can be termed as ‘non-traditional’ where the Asian states (India and China) have a non-interventionist approach in Africa as opposed to the Western countries that have conditionalities before economic engagement. She ends her talk by raising a thought-provoking question: How does the engagement of Asian countries impact the democratization process in Africa? Report compiled by Yaqoob Saleem MA (International Studies)