Resilience amid risk: democratic vulnerability in Africa

Mandipa Ndlovu wrote a guest blog for the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. African democracies are shaped by a dynamic interplay of resilience, omnipresent risk, and structural vulnerability. Deep structural vulnerability persists with the 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) data revealing that about two thirds of Africa’s population now experiences worse participation and accountability scores than a decade ago and security and democracy-related areas have deteriorated for the vast majority of Africa’s people, with 78% of the continent’s population living in a country where the IIAG's Security & Safety sub-category has declined in the past decade. This has contributed to an overall stagnation in Overall Governance with almost no change from 2018 and stopping completely in 2022. These vulnerabilities expose how political rights are intertwined with economic insecurity, and how governance failures amplify political risks which widen the gap between citizens’ democratic aspirations and elite incentives to consolidate unaccountable power. At the same time, Africa’s democracy endures not through its institutions, but through the tenacity of its people.

Read the full text.