This year is shaping up to be a pivotal one for democracy in Africa, potentially setting the course of the continent’s political and economic development for years to come, and at a historic moment when its long-awaited economic takeoff finally seems to be getting underway.
According to the most recent edition of the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report, of the 13 countries with the highest projected compounded annual growth rate from 2014 through 2017, six are in Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the fastest-growing economic region in the world for 2015 (the figures are not yet in), with its GDP growing at 4.5 percent, slightly higher than China’s anticipated GDP increase of 4.3 percent. With prices for commodities remaining depressed globally—the price for oil plunged this week to new 12-year lows—and China’s demand for natural resources slumping as a result of its apparently sustained economic slowdown, African countries are clearly experiencing growth for reasons other than the demand for raw materials.
Demographics are part of the explanation. By 2050, one in four workers in the world will be African. The continent also has the world’s fastest rate of urbanization, which will lower basic infrastructure costs and concentrate consumer markets. Africa’s communications infrastructure, for example, continues to grow at revolutionary rates: Cell phone and internet use have grown at five times global averages over the past decade.
Improvements in governance are perhaps an even more critical component of the economic buoyancy. Countries once written off as “risky” bets are now increasingly attractive places to invest. Just a few years ago, amid violence that left 3,000 dead and displaced half a million, Côte d’Ivoire failed to make payments on its Eurobond. Now, under a new administration, it has posted annual growth in excess of 8 percent for several years in a row while benefiting from significant inflows of foreign investment. Not surprisingly, President Alassane Ouattara trounced the opposition this past October, winning a second term in office in the first round of the presidential election with more than 83 percent of the votes. Therein lies the importance of democracy: It ensures the accountability of those tasked with improving government performance and economic development.
As former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell memorably put it with respect to a flawed poll in that country, most elections in Africa are more aptly termed “election-like events.” Incumbents dominate, mustering all the resources of their states to maintain their hold on power, but better informed and increasingly restive populations—many now connected by social media—have also been mobilizing and flexing their muscles. Last year saw the unprecedented defeat of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and biggest economy, as well as remarkable gains by the opposition against Tanzania’s Party of the Revolution (CCM), the continent’s longest-ruling political organization. In other cases, such as Guinea, the incumbents clung on only by resorting to skulduggery: Amnesty International documented security forces killing people in election-related violence, while European Union monitors criticized the process as “inadequate” and “lacking transparency.”
The 2015 contests, however, were but a prelude to this year, when national-level elections for the presidency and/or parliament will take place in about twenty African countries, including the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Rwanda, Somalia, and Uganda. Moreover, provincial and local government elections are planned in a number of other countries, most notably South Africa, where polls are scheduled in all 52 of the country’s districts (the second tier of government below the nine provinces) and all of its 226 local municipalities. If the electorates continue their recent trend of rewarding performance while punishing incompetence and corruption, Africa may witness considerable upheaval in the months ahead.
Nowhere is this likelier to occur—or with more significant consequences—than the ironically named Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC has a population of more than 77 million people spread across the 11th-largest national territory in the world. Situated in the heart of Africa, the country is endowed with prodigious mineral reserves that even in today’s deflated commodities markets are still valued by some estimates at more than $20 trillion. And yet, for all that potential wealth, the DRC ranks a miserable 176th out of 188 countries and territories on the most recent edition of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index, released last month. A shocking 95 percent of the country’s citizens live on less than $2 a day. Fair and free elections would not only honor the legitimate aspirations of its long-suffering people to control their own destiny, but also put considerable wind into the sails of African democracy.
Alas, standing in the Congolese people’s way is their current ruler, Joseph Kabila, who inherited power from his father. Kabila père was an adventurer who seized power amid the collapse of longtime dictator Mobuto Sese Seko’s rule, only to be assassinated by his own bodyguard in 2001. His son was subsequently proclaimed the “winner” of elections in 2006 and 2011—the latter result denounced as “treachery, lies, and terror” by the DRC’s Roman Catholic bishops, who had deployed 40,000 trained poll watchers to report on the extent of the fraud. The constitution bars Kabila from seeking a third consecutive term this year (it explicitly states that the limit on presidential terms is not subject to “any constitutional revision”; in several other African countries without such provisions, leaders have recently amended the constitution for exactly this purpose). The Congolese ruler may not go quietly, however. If he respects the constitution and leaves office after elections due by November, Kabila faces a lifetime—he is only 44 years old, having come to power before he was even thirty—of looking over his shoulder for potential war crimes prosecutions, due to his role in the civil wars preceding his first “election” as well as the subsequent, poor human rights record of his regime.
Consequently, it is no surprise that young Kabila and his entourage have been pulling out all the stops to avoid having to stand down at the end of this year. You name it, they’ve tried it: blocking legally-adopted children from joining their families (in order to gain leverage with governments abroad); trying to mandate a nationwide census before any vote (in a country the size of the DRC and as lacking in transport infrastructure, the census would take years to complete); splitting the Congo’s 11 provinces into 26 (thus gumming up the already delayed process of local and regional elections, and leaving regime appointees in control of the machinery of state). The most recent effort is a risible call for “national dialogue” to “discuss” a vote that is already enshrined in the constitution. Meanwhile, a report in December by the United Nations mission in the Congo documents the detention of at least 649 political opponents and civil society activists in the first nine months of 2015 alone. Rather diplomatically, it notes that “the shrinking of democratic space is likely to impact the electoral process.”
Absent timely and free elections to enable the Congolese people to transition out of the Kabila era, it is hard to see how the country can avoid sliding back into conflict. The last time that happened nearly a dozen other countries were drawn in and upward of 5 million people lost their lives before the fighting was halted.
The question is what to do now.
While it is true, as Walter Russell Mead has noted, that the overall record of the democracy promotion efforts of the United States and its European partners is something of a mixed bag, U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have not fared badly in Africa. Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, for one, did not hesitate to credit Washington for helping to ensure not only that his country’s elections took place in a timely and credible fashion, but also that the historic results were respected and a peaceful, constitutional transition followed. With this success in mind, we have all the more reason to lament that, as the Carnegie Endowment’s Thomas Carothers has estimated, the Obama Administration has reduced U.S. assistance in fostering democracy, human rights, and accountability worldwide by nearly a third, while the U.S. Agency for International Development’s funding for Africa specifically has declined by 43 percent since 2009.
As the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa puts it, “as we look toward the future, it is clear that Africa is more important than ever to the security and prosperity of the international community, and to the United States in particular.” The United States ought to focus its diplomatic leverage and such material and human resources as are available on helping Africans progress toward transparent, effective governance as their continent’s economy continues to grow. If this can be accomplished, 2016 may be the year that the Congo and other African countries will finally pivot towards a more hopeful future.