As US Goes Big in Africa, Democracy on the Continent Is Failing, Experts Say

‘Backsliding ... that we haven’t seen in decades, with coups and conflicts and political instability and fraudulent elections in many countries.’

Police officers enforce a restriction imposed on motorists during local elections in Lagos, Nigeria, on March 18, 2023. Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images

Africans are less optimistic about democracy than they’ve been in decades.

In surveys this year, many Africans even indicated they would give up the right to vote in exchange for jobs and good governance, according to Afrobarometer, an independent research network that measures public attitudes across the continent.

Africans still want democracy, but the unaccountable governance many are experiencing is “disenchanting” them “deeply,” Afrobarometer CEO Joseph Asunka told The Epoch Times.

He said it’s “disturbing” that growing numbers of Africans favor militaries’ intervening if elected leaders abuse power.

In August 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden presented his administration’s new strategy toward sub-Saharan Africa, designed to counter China’s, and to a lesser extent, Russia’s, growing influence on the continent.

“President Biden said America would be doing more business with Africa going forward and would be investing billions of dollars in Africa—but he made it clear it will only work with those countries who foster democratic values and respect human rights,” said William Mpofu, a governance expert at Wits University in Johannesburg.

“But in 2023, we witnessed democratic backsliding in Africa to the scale that we haven’t seen in decades, with coups and conflicts and political instability and fraudulent elections happening in many countries.”

Look the Other Way?

“Where does this leave Biden’s policy in Africa?“ Mr. Mpofu said. ”Does it mean the U.S. government is only going to work with a handful of true African democracies in 2024 and beyond? Or is it simply going to look the other way and ignore abuses, like China and Russia do, in order to establish itself in Africa?”

Mr. Mpofu told The Epoch Times that he'll remember 2023 as “the year during which Africans lost faith in democracy.”

He said he doesn’t blame them, considering what the year brought: war and genocide in Sudan; conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia, among others; jihadists terrorizing millions across the Sahel, while soldiers seized power in coups and military takeovers; and elections plagued by irregularities, including in the DRC, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.

Many African nations aren’t democratic because ethnic elites and former liberation movements have controlled them since the collapse of colonialism in the 1950s and ‘60s, according to Mr. Mpofu, and in the case of Southern African nations, since the ’80s and mid-'90s.

“Right from the time guerillas and their political leaders emerged from the bush, they emerged possessed and intoxicated by a one-party state psychology, where they weren’t going to brook any political opposition and where they were going to deploy force and fraud to force electoral victory,” the analyst said.

“And things have not changed.”

Mr. Mpofu said that despite all the talk of an “African renaissance” and of Africans becoming more affluent, 2023 showed that few of the continent’s leaders are willing to share the profits from Africa’s vast mineral wealth with their people.

“I can’t think of a single mineral-rich African nation where a ruling party truly passes down wealth to citizens and uses money to really develop their people,” he said.

The National Assembly building in Abuja, Nigeria, on Nov. 2, 2023. AP/ Chinedu Asadu

“In Nigeria and Mozambique, the political elites use oil money to enrich themselves, while millions live in poverty.

“Even in South Africa, the most democratic country in Africa on paper, the ruling elite uses money from gold and platinum to enrich themselves, instead of using the money to end the world’s worst unemployment crisis and to end hunger.”

In early December 2023, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and other groups released a report saying that 1 billion of Africa’s 1.4 billion people couldn’t afford a healthy diet in 2023.

Mr. Mpofu said poor leadership is largely to blame for Africa’s problems.

“Africans have lost hope,“ he said. ”The U.S. policy in Africa is fine, but surely the government in Washington knows that it’s the corrupt political elites of Africa that will ultimately benefit from U.S. projects in Africa, not the African people.

“What we’ve had in Africa since colonialism supposedly ended was always a democratic experiment and not real freedom for Africans.”

Homegrown Exploitation

“The political class in Africa that was fighting the colonial classes also became colonial,” Mr. Mpofu said.

“The political classes of Africa do not speak with the voice of the democrat, or of a liberator, but with the voice of a native colonialist and it’s a voice that says to the world: ‘Allow me the right to bully my own people and to exploit the resources of my country and to clobber any and all opposition to me because I’m a native.’”

Khabele Matlosa, of Lesotho, a former high-ranking African Union (AU) official, told The Epoch Times that he expects 2024 to follow the same pattern as 2023: conflict, coups, and unconstitutional changes designed to keep elites in power.

Mr. Matlosa authored the AU’s Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance, which it adopted in 2007.

But since then, he said, power-hungry elites and army commanders, sometimes backed by Russian mercenaries, have undermined the democratic gains Africa made in the 1990s and early 2000s.

“Since the mid-2000s, democracy’s been on retreat on the continent and we’ve seen a spate of military coups. That trend’s continuing,” Mr. Matlosa said.

“We’ve seen unconstitutional change in the form of sitting heads of state tampering with constitutions to prolong tenure in government. This is continuing as well.”

‘The Real Target Is France’

Kenyan historian and international relations expert Macharia Munene said 2023 saw a resurgence of authoritarian “strongmen” in Africa taking on former colonial power France.

He cited leaders of the military juntas of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger as examples.

“What we have in recent times in West Africa and in the Sahel region are not normal coups; it’s a revolution taking place. And this revolution is not really targeting presidents and ministers,” Mr. Munene told The Epoch Times.

“The real target is France, who these military men perceive as meddlers in African affairs and of pulling the strings of puppet regimes controlled by Paris. If you look at the people who were overthrown in coups, they’re the grandchildren of the liberators who inherited the colonial state.”

In 2024, elections are scheduled in 22 of Africa’s 54 countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 17, 2023. Evgeny Biyatov/Agency RIA Novosti via AP

Mr. Matlosa predicted that the most important election for Africa and the United States will happen in May.

That’s when South Africa, projected by the World Bank to replace Nigeria in 2024 as Africa’s biggest economy, goes to the polls.

“South Africa, say what you like, has been a bastion of democracy in Africa since apartheid ended in 1994. That’s because the ANC (African National Congress) hasn’t needed to rig the vote to stay in power,” he said.

“It’s going to be really interesting to see how the ANC behaves when its hold on power is threatened and when it fears being dethroned.

“If there are, for the first time, any whispers about election irregularities in the elections in South Africa, that is going to send shockwaves around the world and be a real danger signal to the West. Because that will basically say to the China–Russia axis: Here is Africa for you on a plate, come and eat.”

Mr. Matlosa said he had “no doubt” that the ANC’s hold on power is weakening.

“It may not lose governance after this election; it may well form a coalition government in order to stay on the throne,“ he said. ”But it is going to fall below 50 percent of the vote for the first time. And what effect will that have on it? I can’t see it becoming more democratic. I see the opposite happening.”

ANC’s Confiscatory Legislation

Mr. Mpofu agreed that “all the signs point to the ANC becoming more autocratic.”

He pointed out that the party had used the last days of 2023 to pass “dubious” legislation, including a bill that would effectively give the state access to citizens’ pension funds and another that would allow the government to seize private land.

Mr. Mpofu said the ANC is using its majority in parliament to “rush populist laws” in a desperate bid to win support ahead of the elections.

“The ANC has many reasons to panic, including its own corruption and mismanagement of the economy and lack of service delivery,” he said.

Three separate, independent opinion polls released in October 2023 found support for the party at just more than 40 percent.

Two polls show the ANC losing its majority in two key provinces: Gauteng, which includes South Africa’s financial hub, Johannesburg, and KwaZulu-Natal. The Western Cape, which includes the country’s second-richest city and tourism center, Cape Town, has long been governed by the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance.

The three provinces account for more than half of South Africa’s population and nearly two-thirds of its gross domestic product.

“So, even if the ANC somehow holds onto national government by forming a coalition with other parties, if it loses control of the country’s three biggest provinces, is it really in power?” Mr. Mpofu said.

The Africa of 2023 had a “split personality,” he said.

“Its leaders talked of modernizing and industrializing, while the continent remained largely mired in hunger, war, and political instability,” Mr. Mpofu said.

Mr. Matlosa said, “If the U.S. only wants to do business with true democracies in Africa, it’s not going to be doing a lot of business in Africa in 2024.”