E-tivity 1.2. Class discussion on the role of ideology in African politics

To a certain extent, populist and capitalist states were more successful compare to socialist states. Although “the African populist experiment proved to be more useful as a method for the state to penetrate the civil society than it was for civil society to penetrate the state”. We have success story on how populism went well in 3 African countries; Burkina Faso, Ghana and Libya. “The governments of Captain Thomas Sankara and Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, in Burkina Faso and Ghana respectively, provide two excellent examples of African populist regimes. Sankara’s leadership lasted from 1983 to 1987, while Rawlings governed Ghana from New Year’s Eve 1981 until he retired after elections in 2000. Other candidates to be included in this populist category include Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya (since 1969)” (Thomson, 2004). Also, the capitalist states in Africa two decades after independence recorded better performance in terms of economic development. Though, they succumb to the demands of International financial institutions and later fell in the trap of selling public enterprises to the private sector. On the other hand, socialism in the African context had as aim to get rid of dependence from the West. The challenge this ideology faced in Africa is that it wasn’t appropriate to the African reality. This is the reason why it wasn’t adopted as prescribed by the Soviet Union. The African continent gave a new version of socialism called African socialism. “The onset of military coups from the mid-1960s onwards” shows how unsuccessful socialism was on African states.

when analyzing the situation after cold war and today, one can say that populist and capitalist administration were more successful at governing African states than their socialist oriented counterpart, because African capitalist states such as South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, etc. ranks highly in different social-economic aspects such as industrialization, commerce, infrastructures, economic integration than those African social oriented states such the Democratic republic of Congo, Guinea, Sudan, Madagascar, Seychelles etc. where these countries are mainly characterized by several social-political and economic crisis such as political instabilities, poverty, poor infrastructures, economic deficits, high unemployment rates, as well as poor leadership and administrative system.