Political parties in Africa: challenges for sustained multiparty democracy

A review of political parties in Africa

By: Mohamed Salih MA, Nordlund P
Published by: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance / International IDEA, 2007
Via: Eldis

This paper analyses the status of multiparty democracy in Africa, looking particularly at the role of political parties. The report highlights a number of areas in need of reform including legislative regulation of parties, women’s participation, funding of political parties, party democracy and party programmes and policies that represent and reflect the preferences of the people. The paper argues that the democratic content of African political parties is still fragile and the prospects of genuine democratic consolidation vary from country to country. At least six factors support this proposition:

• the majority of African governing political parties are still heavily dependent on the direct or indirect (the embezzlement of public funds to finance elections) use or abuse of government resources
• the African private sector is too small to support the establishment of strong and vibrant civil society organisations and a non-political middle class that are autonomous of the state
• the weakness of the private sector is not only detrimental to civil society’s ability to make demands on the state and protect the interests of its membership; it also means that civil society is incapable of creating coalitions of interests with the political parties
• political parties often perceive state capture for the control of the resources and personnel of the state as a source of elite enrichment; therefore politics itself becomes a means to an end, devoid of any idea of protecting public interests vis-à-vis private gains
• African political parties are sustainable only at the elite level because the elite depend on them to access the resources of the state
• the weakness of African opposition parties and the inability of their leaders to aggregate interests with the governing political parties deny them the opportunity to play their oversight role.

The paper makes a number of recommendations including:

• increased capacity-building and awareness workshops and seminars on the centrality of political parties for thriving democratic governance
• training programmes on political party management and organisation in order to increase their effectiveness, transparency and accountability
• training and decision-making processes that can help to alleviate the lack of women’s representation .

(http://www.idea.int/publications/pp_africa/index.cfm)