The post-election protests in Tanzania shook many across Africa, exposing once again the deep wounds of governance and democracy on the continent. They reminded us that when elections are stripped of fairness, they become instruments of domination rather than expressions of the people’s will. President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner of the national election, “winning” by a staggering 97.66% of the votes in a contest where the main opposition party, Chadema, was disqualified, its leader Tundu Lissu faced treason charges, and all major rivals were banned from running. Such outcomes do not strengthen democracy—they hollow it out, leaving citizens disillusioned and nations teetering between despair and defiance.
While Tanzania burns, Cameroon is sitting on a national tinderbox with ongoing protests and resistance by the opposition following contested national election results in which 92-year-old Paul Biya was declared the winner over the largely popular Issa Tchiroma Bakary. In Côte d’Ivoire, the “landslide” victory of Alassane Ouattara—who is claimed to have won the presidential poll by 89.77% over his closest rival Jean-Louis Billon with only 3.09%—has turned the country into the silence of the grave.
Many Ivorians, like their compatriots in Cameroon, Tanzania, Kenya, and Nigeria—among many other African countries suffering from weak institutions, broken trust, rigged elections, and what the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance calls “less safe, secure democracies”—wonder in shock how they ended up under the stranglehold of one man or a few cabals who have “captured the state,” suffocated all opposition, dismantled institutions of governance, and hounded their opponents.
Democracy is at a crossroads in Africa. Africa is not rejecting democracy as an ideal; Africa is rejecting the way democracy is being practiced. People are tired of state capture by political elites. The Tanzanian young people martyred on the streets of major cities in post-election protests can no longer accept rigged and badly run elections, corruption, insecurity, and an unbroken cycle of suffering and poverty in their continent. Young Africans continue to wonder why a richly blessed continent continues to bleed from failed and self-serving, conscienceless leaders who seem to hate their own people by bringing upon them so much unmerited suffering and deaths.
The gap between democratic aspirations and lived democratic experience—or what they call the “democracy dividend” in Nigeria—is the most important fault line now for leadership on the continent. At this critical moment in Africa’s history, the Catholic Church in Africa has a major role to play. Significantly, in its Vision 2025–2050, the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) designated November as the month for advancing the common good in Africa through prophetic engagement of the Church in every African country—expanding political participation, supporting and strengthening institutional structures for democracy, and forming citizens on their rights, responsibilities, and duties in the struggle for better governance and a better African future.
However, it is important that all African Christians—and indeed all Africans both at home and abroad—understand the seriousness of the current situation in Africa. Particularly for the Church, it is also a crisis of legitimacy, survival, and relevance because the Church’s standing in the eyes of Africans today will be determined by where the Church is standing right now in this battle for the soul of Africa. The ongoing political crises in many African countries are indications of deeper historical and cultural shifts that are just emerging. These shifts will widen as the contradictions of African and global histories and the lies of the “convergence of history” told to Africa through modernity unfold in devastating ways.
There are three realities that the Church in Africa must grapple with in its prophetic mission to the world of politics in Africa. Interestingly, these are factors that have consistently emerged as points of conversation, contestation, and concern for most Africans, namely: the decline in freedom and the collapse of the state in Africa; the crisis of leadership in Africa and its causes; and the link between failing democracy in Africa and underdevelopment. Where leaders respect the institutions of democracy and are transparent and accountable, people are safer, better served, and experience incremental growth in prosperity and peace. Where leaders suffocate accountability and transparency—as is the case in most of Africa today—long-term prosperity collapses under insecurity, capital flight, and social anger.
The Church must awaken today in Africa the social conscience of our leaders and peoples. Any vital Church that claims to defend human dignity, rights, the common good, and the reign of God on earth must form leaders—ecclesial, civic, social, and pastoral—who defend political participation, fight for the poor and impoverished hardworking peoples of Africa (especially women and children), fight corruption, and restore trust in the common good as a shared project and common patrimony, not a private inheritance and treasure of a few thin-top layers of political and religious elites who swim in a sea of wealth while the masses of our people drown in suffering and insouciance.
Freedom in Decline, Failed Leadership, and Unmerited Suffering
Evidence from some of the most credible institutions in Africa and beyond about the state of democracy in Africa shows that Africans still want democracy but are exhausted by empty democratic rituals, political deception, manipulation, and the denial of their freedom and agency. This is the sobering reality that the Atlas of Freedom & Prosperity Report, the Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA)’s Global State of Democracy, Afrobarometer, and Freedom House collectively expose.
Freedom in the World 2024: The Mounting Damage of Flawed Elections and Armed Conflict describes an Africa standing at a dangerous democratic edge. The report notes that global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023, and Africa is central to that story because the continent is experiencing both the erosion of electoral legitimacy and the open collapse of constitutional order through coups. Two linked crises drive this decline: (1) manipulated elections and (2) the takeover of civilian governments by armies.
First, elections are increasingly hollowed out. The report names Zimbabwe’s 2023 elections as an example of how incumbents cling to power by choking opposition access, intimidating journalists, blocking observers, and rewriting outcomes after the vote. In Nigeria—Africa’s most populous democracy—the 2023 general elections were marred by violence at polling stations, logistical chaos, and a failure to transparently transmit results, all of which badly damaged public trust. Voter turnout collapsed to 29 percent, the lowest since 1999, even after millions of mostly young voters had registered. The message to African citizens, especially the youth, is that voting does not guarantee voice. This is the same reality we see in the ongoing post-election protests in Tanzania, the post-election “silence of the grave” in Côte d’Ivoire, and the post-election uncertainties in Cameroon, as well as the tension in Uganda and Benin.
Second, military coups are normalizing the destruction of democratic institutions. Since 2020, six countries in the Sahel—Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan, and most recently Niger in July 2023—have experienced coups. In Niger, soldiers overthrew a democratically elected president, suspended the constitution, banned parties, and dissolved parliament. Freedom House records an 18-point decline in Niger’s score after the coup, one of the steepest collapses worldwide. Sudan shows how this decay becomes humanitarian catastrophe: after the 2021 coup derailed the civilian transition, rival military factions plunged the country into war in 2023, killing thousands and displacing millions, with widespread gender-based and ethnic violence—the worst of which is the unfolding atrocities in and around El Fasher, North Darfur. This campaign of mass atrocities by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied militias—described by multiple human rights and UN bodies as ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide—will shock the world.
For Africa’s Church, civil society, and pro-democracy actors, this means the struggle is no longer just to “get people to vote.” The struggle is to defend pluralism itself—the right of different political visions, ethnic communities, and faith communities to coexist without being criminalized as enemies of the state. When pluralism dies, elections become theatre, and bullets become policy. The report’s warning for Africa is stark: unless constitutional order, credible elections, and civilian oversight of force are defended, more Africans will be governed by men who were never truly chosen—and who rule by fear rather than by consent.
The Atlantic Council’s Freedom & Prosperity Atlas (2025) records the twelfth consecutive year of decline in political freedom worldwide. Africa mirrors this trend. The Atlas warns that when the rule of law, press freedom, and participatory institutions weaken, prosperity itself falters. Economies governed by free and accountable institutions grow nearly 9 percent faster over two decades than autocratic ones. Freedom, in other words, is not a luxury; it is the infrastructure of flourishing societies.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s 2024 Governance Index confirms that progress in governance across Africa has stalled since 2019, with sharp regression in Participation, Rights, and Inclusion, and in Security and Rule of Law. “Africa,” the Foundation notes, “is less safe, secure, and democratic today than it was in 2012.” Similarly, the International IDEA finds that fewer African countries are improving in democratic quality than those regressing, warning of widespread “democratic fatigue.” Freedom House adds a striking figure: only eight African countries can currently be considered truly democratic (2021). The rest are trapped in hybrid or authoritarian systems marked by elite capture, weak institutions, and chronic dependence on foreign aid.
Meanwhile, Afrobarometer surveys reveal that around two-thirds of Africans still prefer democracy to any other system, but only about a third are satisfied with how it functions in their countries. Among the youth—the continent’s majority—the disillusionment runs deep. Many now say they would tolerate military intervention if civilian leaders remain corrupt or ineffective. This was clearly demonstrated in the military takeover in Madagascar following a youth-led protest. The youth of Madagascar happily accepted the military over the democratically elected but failed leadership of Rajoelina. In South Africa, almost half of citizens now say they would accept military rule—a stunning shift driven by anger over corruption, crime, unemployment, and the decay of public services. Africans are not falling in love with soldiers; they are falling out of love with political elites who call themselves “democratic” but govern like private monarchs, running their countries through patron-client networks akin to fiefdoms. The danger is that justified anger at corrupt civilian leadership is being converted into consent for open-ended military rule, which historically delivers neither common good, human dignity, rights, prosperity, nor security.
The Church’s Prophetic Role
The social cost of failed leadership and failing democracy in Africa is measured not only in lost elections or mismanaged budgets but in broken lives and squandered futures. Across the continent, citizens bear the burden of corruption, inequality, and neglect that have become normalized under unaccountable governance. According to Transparency International (2019), over 130 million Africans pay bribes each year for basic services—healthcare, education, police protection, and utilities—because corruption has become the currency of access. The poor pay twice: once in taxes and again in bribes. Corruption is not merely theft; it is a system of exclusion that punishes honesty and rewards impunity.
The consequences are devastating. Hospitals are drained of medicines, teachers abandon classrooms for lack of pay, and young Africans migrate or perish in desperate search of opportunity. The African Development Bank estimates that Africa loses over $148 billion annually to corruption—resources that could fund universal education or end chronic hunger. Instead, failed leadership turns public institutions into instruments of private enrichment, eroding trust between citizens and the state. According to Afrobarometer, across the continent, anger about corruption, unemployment, the cost of living, and basic service failure drives disillusionment with democratic leadership and illiberal democracies in Africa. The United Nations reports that more than 430 million Africans live in extreme poverty, while youth unemployment exceeds 60 percent in some countries. This poverty is not inevitable; it is manufactured by greed and misrule. As IDEA warns, people in Africa are withdrawing their consent to be misgoverned by corrupt and insensitive rulers. The tension in many African countries today—like Tanzania or Cameroon—are pent-up feelings of frustration and disillusionment, which have turned many governments in Africa into crisis-management modes rather than long-term policy and transformative initiatives for growth, development, and strategic planning.
Failed leadership is also a moral crisis. It destroys civic virtue, breeds cynicism, and fractures social solidarity, spewing mistrust into what should be a living ecosystem—political pluralism, inclusive statehood, legal protections, and economic opportunities. When leaders loot national wealth or suppress dissent, they teach citizens that survival depends on complicity, not integrity, or on political cleavage and prebendalism rather than merit and fairness. The result is a vicious cycle of dependency and despair. Africans are turned into beggars and praise singers rather than actors and agents in their history, while the youth see that the future belongs to those who can buy it rather than those who work for it. Africa’s greatest wound, therefore, is not scarcity but betrayal—the betrayal of the many by the few. True renewal will come only when leadership becomes a vocation of service and when power once again serves the common good rather than the privileged few.
This moment, I argue, is not merely a political crisis in Africa; it is a moral and spiritual crisis—a deep rupture in our collective history and imagination. It is the failure of vision and virtue among those entrusted with leadership. Across the continent, we are witnessing not only corruption in government but corrosion in the moral soul of our societies. The convergence of Africa with the promises of modernity—development, democracy, and dignity—has failed to deliver. Instead, Africa’s own elites have become new colonialists, exploiting their people with a cruelty that rivals the old empire. Power has turned inward, feeding on the very lives it was meant to protect.
This is, therefore, a crisis of history—a decisive moment demanding that Africans ask anew: What kind of future do we want, and for whom? Shall we continue to drift between imitation and despair, or shall we rise to claim our freedom as agents of our own destiny? Africa’s liberation can no longer be postponed. It must be a second and even third liberation—not only from foreign domination but from the internalized systems of greed, tribalism, and mediocrity that keep our people poor and voiceless.
Every African carries a gift—a creative spark waiting to be recognized and nurtured. The tragedy is that bad leadership has buried these gifts under layers of fear and exclusion. The Church, as the conscience of the people, must now help awaken these buried talents—calling Africa’s sons and daughters to rebuild a moral order where power serves the people and every person’s gift becomes the seed of a new future. SECAM’s vision for 2025–2050 offers a roadmap: a Church that collaborates with governments to promote the common good, constitutional democracy, human rights, religious freedom, and accountable governance. To make this vision real, the Church must transform its social teaching into civic formation and its synodal style into a democratic ethic.
A Prophetic Stance at the Turning Point
Given the seriousness of the current political crisis in Africa and the fraying of democratic institutions, rule of law, free and fair elections, crisis of transition, and poor governance, the Church must stand with the youth and the poor who still believe that democracy, however fragile, is worth fighting for. If some Church leaders continue to appease the powerful in Africa without interrogating them, or to wine and dine with politicians who are destroying Africa’s future, the Church will lose credibility before the young generation it seeks to evangelize. But if it speaks with moral clarity, forms consciences, and builds bridges across ethnic, political, and religious divides, it will help midwife a new Africa—one where power serves the people and politics becomes a ministry of the common good.
Democracy in Africa is not dead; it is pleading for disciples, prophets, and martyrs. The Catholic Church must answer that plea with courage, clarity, and truth told in charity—with hope anchored on faith and social justice—ushering in a new springtime of justice and peace rooted in Gospel nonviolence for a new heaven and a new earth in our beloved African Motherland.
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