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ISSN : 1744-2532 E- ISSN 2516-5305
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This special issue of African Renaissance is a collection of well-articulated interdisciplinary research and discerning discussions of African contemporary issues that advance understanding of the appropriate mitigation strategies that can transform Africa from its present deplorable condition. Indeed, Africa, unlike other continents, has continually grappled with challenges limiting its capacity to attain the much-expected sustainable development. Comparatively, Africa is still suffering from or affected by some of the key indicators of underdevelopment, such as poverty, unemployment, inequality, poor infrastructure, bad governance, state fragility, illegitimate government, corruption, electoral mal-practices, insecurity, service delivery protests, violence, insurgency, military incursions, excessive state coercion, police brutality, weak governmental institutions, absence of rule of law, and abuse of human rights. With Africa’s large scale of arable land and natural resources, it still cannot feed its population and still suffers from resource curses due to its inability to perform economically, despite being a continent with a massive endowment of natural resources. In today’s international governance system, Africa, despite her raw-material and natural resource strengths, can hardly meet the expectations of its citizens. Its rule of law, law enforcement agencies, and parliaments are not only weak but unable to control violence and maintain internal peace and security. The continent seems to be napping and severely lagging behind other continents in almost all the critical areas of development due to a leadership problem. Today, Africa still has one of the worst electioneering processes, where leaders ascend elective positions or political power through electoral practices characterized by massive rigging and manipulation of election results. Despite the adoption of digitalization in the electioneering process in some African states, the outcome is not different from the manual system. This raises concerns about the readiness and sincerity of African leaders to transform the continent from its current Beldam state to a more desirable and progressive level.
Currently, despite Africa’s strides in economic growth, it is still riveted by the expanding crises of violence, armed conflicts, insurgency, and herders-farmers conflict. This has partly made many African states very fragile because of their inability to control and prevent violence or armed conflicts. The fragility of African states manifests in their inability to meet the core expectations of their citizens. Generally, citizens’ core expectations may include security, social service, a high quality of life, the legitimacy of government, and access to fundamental human rights, among others. However, these expectations are hardly provided by some governments in African states, thus the increasing rate of service delivery protests in countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Mali, Niger, Gabon, Cameroun, and many other African states. This raises tensions for violence and armed conflicts in some African states. In fact, some of the recent military incursions in African politics and governance have been attributed to bad governance and the inordinate desire of some African leaders to remain in power indefinitely. This is possible partly because of the restrictions on press freedom. Over the years, press freedom has continually been on the decline in Africa as authoritarian African leaders’ resort to the use of legal pressure, imprisonment, and other forms of harassment to suppress the press. Evidence has shown that restrictions on press freedom have severe implications for bad governance, lack of accountability, corruption, and the abysmal performance of governments in power due to the absence of independent reporting of the government’s activities in some African states. Government-citizen relations, which rely on freedom of the press and unrestricted access to social media, are banned or regarded as grievous offenses in some African states, especially when social media platforms are used to criticize the government’s action or performance. Constructive or robust opposition, which is the hallmark of democratic government in developed democracies, is hardly allowed in most African states.
This may have been the reason why Africa’s democracy is declining, as increasing numbers of African heads of state have moved to undermine term limits or rig elections to remain in power. With authoritarian governments becoming more visibly seen across the continent, with few exceptions, electorates will be increasingly alienated from their representatives in government or parliament in Africa. This can lead to instability, which in turn can result in severe episodes of violence, as is currently witnessed in Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. This chaos will continue to grow as long as political elites struggle for power and citizens criticize or resist oppression imposed on them by the ruling government. This invariably could inhibit socio-economic development skewed negatively against the continent’s rapidly growing population. Collectively, these negative forces are capable of leading to the displacement of people and emigration—to other African countries or Europe. To address these lingering contemporary Africa’s challenges, it will largely require mitigating long-standing grievances left unresolved and often intensified by demo-authoritarian governments that are occupying political power across the African continent. African Renaissance, as a viable journal platform, has over the years disseminated useful and cutting-edge research findings capable of resolving African challenges. Whether exploring the frontiers of African issues such as service delivery, politics, corruption, pensions, social intervention, food security, diplomatic relations, insurgency, digitalization, grappling with issues in electoral mal-practices, constitutionalism, crimes, erratic power supply, and pushing the boundaries of Afrocentric democratic government, or exploring complex military interventions in African politics, scholarly contributions in this special issue represent a collective effort to advance knowledge on how to re-awake Africa towards the drive for sustainable development.