By the end of 1980s, only a few of African states were democratic, majority were ruled by military regimes. In early 1990s the political situation in Africa changed, multi partism started, although military regimes remained in power in some states but the dominant single party states that were common after independence were totally absent from the political map of Africa.
Consequent victory by ANC headed by Nelson Mandela took enormous twist with most ministerial portfolios being held by ANC. However things took a negative turn with the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that claimed a million lives and left thousands homeless. During that period (1990s), civil wars in Angola, Somalia and Liberia hindered the establishment of national governments. Never the less during this period, Africa was undoubtedly steering towards democracy.
By 1995 most of African states held competitive elections. Indeed in most cases it was first time most African countries were holding first elections with opposition parties. In return these opposition were awarded by the superpowers in both economic and military hardware regardless whether the regimes applied oppressive manner against their own people.
The end of 1980s showed most military regimes and single party states looking for international support that gave them less supportive context for authoritarianism. Instead a number of western governments, world bank and IMF began to insist that aid and governance had to be linked to political reforms, during the same period, political conditionality was added to economic conditionality which had emerged earlier. The political conditionality was to hold aid and investments on African governments that abused human rights and political freedom to their citizens until the abuses are removed. In most cases, political conditionality was linked to democratization or for others good governance. But in reality there is no simple case in Africa that external conditionality was imposed without there being strong domestic pressure for democracy within the African states concerned.
The change in the political environment in 1980s created an external situation that was more supportive to African democracy than before and made it more difficult for the authoritative regimes that wanted to prevent it.
Although external environment played a greater role in political reforms, much of the pressure was created in Africa by Africans. In assessing the importance of external and internal pressures, most of the African scholars concluded that inner pressure have played a bigger role and that the external progress have contributed relatively modestly. I concur with the analysis of these scholars. Considering the primacy of domestic factors, every African would testify that in every African state there has been a broad-based movements for political reforms with a demand for democracy which has been defined as requiring multi-party political system.
Although democratic movements in Africa have been influenced by developments in other parts of the world, the major contributing factor had been concerned with African experiences, in a more broad plausible way, in identifying the uniformity in political change across sub Saharan states since 1990, it’s been partly predominantly influenced by the restructuring of the global political system, there has been enormous opposition against autocratic regimes both by single party and military versions, and in Africa by varied range of political forces.
