Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
I was in Niger during this most recent coup and for several months afterwards. The CSRD is apparently doing all the right things to transition back to some form of representative democracy but I would argue that even if everything goes the way that it is planned now, that the corruption, nepotism and patronage will still be there eating away at whatever positive moves that the new government makes. Until you get rid of that rot, throwing a veneer of "Western style" democracy isn't going to be successful and you won't get rid of that rot until Africans themselves decide to get rid of it themselves.
It is true that Africans will have to get rid of that rot themselves. It's also true that it's likely to take them a while to do it, just as it took us a while to do it. The glossy version of our own history that we teach in school often leads us to forget - if we ever knew it - that for much of our own history corruption, nepotism, and patronage were as prevalent as they are in Africa today. The same is true of Europe, which for much of its history experienced not only corruption, nepotism, and patronage but a level of political violence far greater than what we see in Africa today.

Africa's process of political definition may have been arrested by colonialism, but once resumed, why should we assume that it would run more smoothly or peacefully than similar processes elsewhere?