After years of being ruled by corrupt elites and the military, Africa is now shifting toward systems with greater political freedoms. Yet change is often blocked by conflict, and even when reforms are enacted and free elections established, violence often accompanies these elections.

Ethnic Rivalry Africa has suffered from frequent civil wars that are in many ways the legacy of colonial era policies of divide and rule. Divisions and conflicts between ethnic or religious groups were deliberately aggravated by European colonial powers. To make it difficult for Africans to unite against colonial rule, the borders and administrative units of the African colonies were designed so that different and sometimes hostile groups were put together under the same jurisdiction (Figure 7.20 shows the situation in Nigeria).

After independence, when Africans took over, governance was complicated because African officials inevitably belonged to one local ethnic group or another and so were not seen as impartial in their attempts to resolve conflicts. Moreover, during the colonial era, older indigenous traditions for ensuring ethical behavior, punishing greed by leaders, and resolving ethnic conflict had been weakened. The political institutions that replaced them were often not adept at conflict resolution, resulting in hostilities between ethnic groups that have at times devolved into civil wars (Figure 7.21C).

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The Role of Geopolitics Cold War geopolitics between the United States and the former Soviet Union deepened and prolonged African conflicts that grew out of divide-and-rule policies. After independence, some sub-Saharan African governments turned to socialist models of economic development, often receiving economic and military aid from the Soviet Union. Other governments became allies of the United States, receiving equally generous aid (see Figure 5.13). Both the United States and the USSR tried to undermine each other’s African allies by arming and financing rebel groups.

In the 1970s and 1980s, southern sub-Saharan Africa became a major area of East–West tension. The United States aided South Africa’s apartheid government in military interventions against Soviet-allied governments in Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique. Another area of Cold War tension was the Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia and Somalia fought intermittently throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. At different times, the Soviets and Americans funded one side or the other. The failure by both sides in the Cold War to anchor the aid they dispensed to any requirements that it be used for sustainable development became a major stimulus for militarization and corruption. Once this source of cash was removed at the end of the Cold War, corrupt officials turned to selling off natural resources and commodities.

Conflict and the Problem of Refugees Conflicts create refugees and refugees are commonplace across sub-Saharan Africa. Refugees pour back and forth across borders throughout this region and are displaced within their own countries. Often, they are trying to escape genocide (the deliberate destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious, or political group). With only 11 percent of the world’s population, this region contains about 19 percent of the world’s refugees, and if people displaced within their home countries are also counted, the region has about 28 percent of the world’s refugee population (see Figure 7.21D). Women and children constitute 75 percent of Africa’s refugees because many adult men who would be refugees are either combatants, jailed, or dead.

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As difficult as life is for these refugees, they also place a severe burden on the areas that host them. Even with help from international agencies, the host areas find their own development plans deferred by the arrival of so many distressed people who must be fed, sheltered, and given health care. Large portions of economic aid to Africa have been diverted to deal with the emergency needs of refugees.

Successes and Failures of Democratization In sub-Saharan Africa, efforts to expand political freedoms have produced mixed results. The number of elections held in the region has increased dramatically. In 1970, only 11 states had held elections since independence. By 2006, twenty-five out of the then 44 sub-Saharan African states had held open, multiparty, secret ballot elections, with universal suffrage. By 2014, every country had held some form of election, though not all could be considered “free and fair” (see the Figure 7.21 map).

While the implementation of democratic elections has increased (see Figure 7.21B), the growth of other political freedoms—such as freedom of speech, the freedom to assemble in public, and the ability to participate in policy formation at the local and national levels—has been more irregular and uneven. Public frustration with suspicious election outcomes, authoritarian policies, and violent repression of peaceful protests (see Figure 7.21A) has often led to rebellion (see Figure 7.21C).

At times, flawed elections have brought about massive violence. In 2008, after several peaceful election cycles, Kenya had an election so corrupt that the country erupted in deadly protest riots. More than 1000 people died and 600,000 were displaced by mobs of enraged voters. By 2010, a new Kenyan constitution gave some hope that political freedoms would be better protected. In 2008, local elections in Nigeria sparked similar violence, and in the Congo (Kinshasa) in 2006, the first elections held there in 46 years resulted in violence that left more than 1 million Congolese people refugees within their own country. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, the will of the voting public became more evident when the ruling party lost more than 40 percent of its legislative seats to opposition parties.

Zimbabwe may represent the worst case of the failed attempts at democratization. In the 1970s, Robert Mugabe became a hero to many for his successful guerilla campaign in what was then called Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The defeated white minority government had been allied with apartheid South Africa but was not formally recognized by any other country because of its extreme racist policies. Mugabe was elected president in 1980, following relatively free multiparty elections. Over the years, however, his authoritarian policies have impoverished and alienated more and more Zimbabweans while increasing his personal wealth. In the 1990s, he implemented a highly controversial land-redistribution program that resulted in his supporters gaining control of the country’s best farmland, much of which had been in the hands of white Zimbabweans. This move decimated agricultural production and contributed to a chronic food shortage and a massive economic crisis. The resulting political violence created 3 to 4 million refugees who fled mostly to neighboring South Africa and Botswana. Mugabe held on to his office through the rigged elections of 2002 and 2008, but was then forced to share power in 2009 with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who became prime minister. After some of Tsvangirai’s policies were implemented, Zimbabwe began to have some modest economic growth. In 2012, though, Mugabe called for early elections and appeared to be financing his campaign with money from state-owned diamond mines. The elections, which occurred in 2013 and returned Mugabe to power, were widely condemned as fraudulent. 159. ZIMBABWE’S ROBERT MUGABE—A PROFILE

In other places, however (most recently in South Sudan and Rwanda and some years ago in South Africa), elections have helped end civil wars and resettle refugees as the possibility of becoming respected elected leaders induced former combatants to lay down their arms. In Sierra Leone and Liberia, public outrage against corrupt ruling elites resulted in elections that brought fortuitous changes of leadership. Over the long term, fair and regular elections can help enable people to have more input at the policy level, which forces governments to be more responsive to the needs of their citizens.

The education of African women and their economic and political empowerment are now recognized as essential to development. As girls’ education levels rise, population growth rates fall; as the number of female political leaders increases, so does their influence on policies designed to reduce poverty.

One major characteristic of the expansion of political freedoms has been the increase in the number of women across Africa who are assuming positions of political influence. This chapter opened with the story of Juliana Rotich, a businesswoman in Kenya whose road to success was built on policy changes pushed by a number of female Kenyan political figures over the last decade. In Nigeria, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first female finance minister, now fights for the empowerment of women entrepreneurs as a director at the World Bank. In Liberia—the country devastated by the logging fraud, child-soldier recruitment, and general brutality of the dictator Charles Taylor (see the vignette on Silas Siakor)—President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (also a former World Bank economist) began to work on democratic and environmental reforms immediately after she took office (see Figure 7.21B). In Rwanda, racked by genocide and mass rapes in the 1990s, women now make up 51 percent of the national legislature, the highest percentage in the world. And Rwandan women are also leaders at the local level, where they make up 40 percent of the mayors. In Mozambique, 39.2 percent of the parliament is female; in Burundi, 36 percent; and in South Africa, 42.7 percent. Altogether, there are 17 African countries where the percentage of women in national legislatures is well above the world average of 17.7 percent (the U.S. figure is 16.8 percent). 170. WOMEN HAVE STRONG VOICE IN RWANDAN PARLIAMENT

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There has been a sea change in attitudes toward women in politics. The policies that establish quotas for the number of female members of parliament are usually a reflection of a larger, post-conflict commitment to the empowerment of women and to involving women in all aspects of political and civil society. Sometimes the quotas are written into a country’s constitution, but it is important to note that many female leaders in Africa, including Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and at least half of Rwanda’s female parliamentarians, were elected without the aid of quotas.