it is argued, the continent went through
a wave of trying to liberate itself from
the colonialists and gain political and to
some extent, economic power. If you read
‘State of Africa’ by Martin Meredith, you
get to see details of a 50-year journey
through the continent – some of the
details in the book cover this period that
was characterized by a continent inspired
by itself and rising against the colonial
powers.
Ghana set the pace with attaining
independence in 1957 and inspired the
rest of the continent – after that, there
were several countries that became more
aggressive in their pursuit of independence
riding on the then Pan-African ideology
pioneered by Kwame Nkrumah.
The continent then went into a period of
resetting its political structures – we know
stories of self-entitled and brutal dictators
that emerged in this period immediately
after independence. To some extent, there
was abit of political instability as the
owners of enterprise (colonialists) packed
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to leave – by then, we were heading into
the famous cold war period – where states
either leaned west or east. This period had
its own economic impact on the continent
that lingered on into the 1990s. In general,
after independence in the 1960s and into
1990s, Africa was at crossroads!
End of the cold war in the 1990’s then
ushered in a new era of some semblance
of structures in politics, most notably, the
clamor for ‘western’ style democracy – in
this, the population then got some power
to question and demand for accountability
from their governments. Regimes at that
time then sort to ‘correct’ their policies
to appeal to the people and hopefully be
voted back in. In Kenya, we remember
the clamor for multi-party democracy
emerged around this period – with first
multi-party election happening in 1992.
From the 1990s to date, the political
profile, though developed from what it
was, is still very varied across the continent
and we cannot universally say that there is
ONE Africa as far as political maturity is
concerned. Even though, on average, there
are about 15 to 20 election programs in
Africa every year, there are still places
where armed conflicts still exist to date
and are potentially no-go zones for
businesses, local or foreign.
Even with the electoral processes in place,
lack of trust in the systems and hunger
for power from the political elite has
caused some level of political instability
in several countries – we saw this in Ivory
Coast earlier, DRC. In Kenya, we know
election periods have been characterized
by violence and disruption to businesses
leading to economic slowdown in the
period immediately after elections – we
saw this more prominently in 2007/8 and
again in 2017.
In politics and more specifically during
elections in any country, other countries
do align themselves accordingly – of
course depending on their interests. This
happens in Africa too. In subtle ways,
one would tell which regime is aligned to
which.