From Africa Recovery, Vol.16 #2-3 (September 2002), page 35

Poverty 'stalls' further spread of democracy

The rapid expansion of democracy in sub-Saharan Africa since 1990 has been accompanied by widening and deepening poverty - producing a "stall" in the further spread of democracy, and, in a few cases, a return to dictatorship and internal conflict. Those findings, contained in the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2002, point to a simple conclusion, said UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown. "To promote human development successfully we need to put the politics back into poverty eradication.... Unless governments can demonstrate to their citizens that they are taking successful action on bread and butter issues ... the dramatic expansion of democracy risks going in reverse." By the end of 1999, 29 sub-Saharan African countries, including 77 per cent of the region's population, had established multi-party democracies.

But the spread of democracy has not brought the anticipated boost to development. Of those sub-Saharan countries with sufficient data, 23 are not on track to achieve the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals for sharply reduced poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality rates by 2015, UNDP reports.

The problem is not that democracy is unrelated to development, Mr. Malloch Brown said, but that democratic institutions in many developing countries are too weak. "In too many countries, governments act as if democracy stops when the polling booths close. What is now urgently needed is a second wave of democratization ... deepening the practice of democratic government."

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