CNN: Can Democracy Thrive in Africa?

[Dayuhan]

My point is that even in Europe, Boundaries were imposed on the people: look at Yugoslavia, Poland that disapeared for centuries, the German minorities in Poland... The question is not there. Also, my experience is that people have true nationalist feelings in the Great Lake region for exemple. A congolese is a Congolese and he denise the right to be Congolese to Rwandese. The same with people from Burundi, South Sudan... Their personal history within those "artificial" boundaries in the last 50 years has shaped their national perception.

Certainly true. My point is simply that Africans are in the process of defining their political identities and affiliations. The state of this process and the manner in which it is carried out will of course vary considerably from place to place. Sometimes it may even be peaceful. It must, though, be worked out by Africans: no outside power can come in and decide what people should be part of what nation, where national boundaries should be, and how these emerging nations should interact with one another.

The process has involved violence and will involve more violence, as it has everywhere else. Africans have had to endure and will still have to endure absolutely horrible governance... just like everybody else has had to. The extent to which the outside world can change this is, I fear, quite limited.

No but if it can be minimised, then it should. Political evolutionism is no reason for social darwinism.

Agreed... we must do what we can. There are quite severe limits, though, to what we can do... and if we try to alleviate misery by taking charge ourselves, we may do as much harm as good. Our efforts to "fix" other places have not always been entirely successful.