African Democracies and African Politics

Challenging orthodox views on contemporary African politics and democracy, M.A. Mohamed Salih offers a new approach to the topic, emphasizing the role of ethnicity and religion, in particular that of minorities. His central theme is that government donors from Western nations have imposed Western style democracy in Africa, ignoring the indigenous politics of the region, often resulting in chaos. As a consequence many African societies are divided by ethnicity. Revealing how minorities are inevitably marginalized in all aspects of development and education, Salih shows how, in many instances, they are treated as enemies of the state, as are the opposition parties. He examines democracy and authoritarian development in a pan-African context and the democratic potential for political education, and provides a range of country-specific case-studies, including multi-party democracy in Sudan; democratizing anarchy in Sierra Leone; religious violence in Obassango's Nigeria; and ethnic federalism in Ethiopia.