African Democracy

Today, all but one African nation holds elections, the remaining being Eritrea. However, African democracy does not always produce representative governments. The Economist Intelligence Unit's annual democracy index ranks only one African country, Mauritius, as a full democracy. Their criteria is rather tough however, even classifying the very well praised Botswana as a flawed democracies.

A quantitative measure of good governance, called the Mo Ibrahim Index, shows that there is a decline of 5% since 2007 in African political participation. According to the think tank, Freedom House, the number of full electoral democracies among the 49 sub-Saharan countries has falled from 24 in 2005 to 19 as of today.

This does not mean Africa has not come a long way. In 1990, Freedom House had listed just three African countries with multiparty political systems, universal suffrage, regular fraud-free elections, and secret ballots. Reformers also have plenty of reasons to be hopeful. Growing sophistication of opposition groups have become less of a mess, divided, undemocratic, and starved of resources.

Impressive economic growth rates in many African countries have fueled a communications explosion. Political campaigns no longer need or depend on government-owned media or the ability to travel to distant villages. They are able to reach more young voters and capture the desire for political freedoms.

Let's hope this wave of democracy and political freedoms continue to grow in Africa.

For more on this: http://www.economist.com/node/21551494?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/ar/glasshalffull