This Discussion Paper provides a thought-provoking and radical intervention into the ongoing debates on democratic governance and accountability in Africa. The author undertakes a critical overview of the discourse on democratisation in Africa and notes that democracy on the continent cannot be fully understood on the basis of the ways in which electoral pluralism has played out in the last 20 years. The paper critiques mainstream explanations and points out their shortcomings. It goes on to make a compelling case for an alternative framework based on historically informed dialectical analysis of everyday democracy and struggles for democracy in Africa. Noting that no two democracies are exactly the same, the paper advocates the need for democracy in Africa to be studied on its own terms, and in a way that facilitates taking the African experience into the global arena to produce a truly comparative theory of democratisation on a world scale. The paper is essential reading for all those interested in the history, present and future of democracy in Africa.
Professor ADEBAYO O. OLUKOSHI, is the Director, United Nations Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), Dakar, Senegal. He was the Executive Secretary of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) in Dakar up until 2009. Before that he had been a Research Programme Coordinator at the Nordic African Institute, Uppsala and the Director of Research at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Victoria Island, Lagos.
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (The Nordic Africa Institute) P.O. Box 1703
SE- 751 47 Uppsala, Sweden www.nai.uu.se
