Problems with African Democracy Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Problems with African Democracy - Research Paper Example To better understand the main challenges that Democracy has faced in Africa, it is important to briefly look at the history of Democracy in Africa. As Samuel Decalo argues in his book Psychosis of Power: African Personal Dictatorship, the struggle for independence in Africa since the first half of the twentieth century was based on the view that the colonized people had the right and the ability to determine their political destinies on the basis of self-determination (Decalo, 1989). Decalo goes ahead to argue in this book that many African countries embraced democracy as an ideal system of governance because democracy offered all the citizens of a country the opportunity to participate in the decision making of their countries. Decalo goes ahead to argue that African countries embraced Democracy because they were tired of the authoritarian rule of the colonizers and they therefore wanted a system of governance that would ensure that all the citizens of their countries would participate in making crucial decision of their countries. However, when many African countries became independent from late 1950s up to the early 1990s, what followed was a history of authoritarian regimes and many coup d’à ©tats (Owusu, 1991).  In his article â€Å"Democracy and Africa- A view from the Village†, Owusu says that from 1960 up to 1990, more than thirty African countries had experienced either a coup d’à ©tat, or an abortive coup d’à ©tat.