Democracy and the 2063 Development Agenda in Africa. From past to future

Abstract

Democracy and development are two intertwined concepts and processes, especially since the advent of neo-liberalism in the late 1980s. On the African continent, the adoption of an economic development model and system of governance based on neo-liberalism was not the result of a free choice of most local political entourages adhering to the socialist model and one-party regimes, but rather of the diktats of a post-Cold War environment in which state and institutional neo-liberalism dominated, notably the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), and of states in the Global North. As a result of this, many African states were forced to carry out reforms and openings in a hurry contrary to their preferences for schemes that would guarantee the survival of their regimes, the development of a local matrix, territorial integrity, and the possibility of maturing internal democratic processes and a local bourgeois class that would later sustain both liberal democracy and a market economy. The failure of the openings operated in that context led to collective decisions within the Organization of African Unity/African Union (OAU/AU) to relaunch a development model based on local reality, whose AU Agenda 2063 appears as a response to this challenge. Therefore, with this article, I bring to reflection, through the historical method and contextualization, some elements that allow us to understand the attempt to move towards a local development model guided by Africans, amidst the difficulties of continental integration processes, of generational transition, in a continent where half the population is under 25 years old, but the gerontocracy seems not interested in yielding power.