This episode explores how the legacies of European colonialism in Africa impact the success of democratization today. How do international organizations play a role in declining support for democratic politics in parts of Africa? And how can a reliance on donors hinder the emergence of viable democratic structures? Finally, tune in to hear about the nexus between climate change and the demographic challenges faced by Africa.
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Glossary
Foreign direct investment (FDI)
(10:34 or p.3 in the transcript)
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a category of cross-border investment in which an investor resident in one economy establishes a lasting interest in and a significant degree of influence over an enterprise resident in another economy. Ownership of 10 percent or more of the voting power in an enterprise in one economy by an investor in another economy is evidence of such a relationship. FDI is a key element in international economic integration because it creates stable and long-lasting links between economies. FDI is an important channel for the transfer of technology between countries, promotes international trade through access to foreign markets, and can be an important vehicle for economic development. source
Mali Civil War
(17:15 or p.5 in the transcript)
Mali has been in crisis since 2012, when a northern separatist rebellion led by members of the minority ethnic Tuareg community paved the way for a military coup and an Islamist insurgent advance. Rebels—bolstered by arms from Libya and fighters with ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)—declared an independent state of “Azawad” in the north. By mid-2012, AQIM and two allied groups had outmaneuvered the separatists to assert control over much of the north. At the transitional government’s request, France deployed its military in early 2013 to counter an Islamist insurgent advance and ousted insurgent leaders from major towns in the north. A U.N. peacekeeping operation, MINUSMA, was established in mid-2013 to help stabilize the country, absorbing a nascent African-led intervention force. Veteran politician Ibrahim Boubacar Kéïta was elected president, at which point donors, including the United States, normalized relations with Bamako. French forces transitioned into Operation Barkhane, a regional counterterrorism mission that received U.S. military logistical support, in 2014. Under international pressure to reach a peace deal in the north, the government signed an accord in 2015 with two armed coalitions: one led by ex-separatists, and the other by pro-unity groups with ties to Bamako. President Kéïta was reelected in 2018, but opposition mounted over corruption, allegedly fraudulent legislative elections, insecurity, and economic hardships. Large street protests erupted against Kéïta’s administration in mid-2020. State security forces cracked down on protesters, and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) mediators failed to achieve a roadmap out of the impasse. The 2020 coup d’état followed. source
Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to a new episode of Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, the Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the seventh episode of season eight of Democracy in Question and I am very pleased to welcome back today Michael Woldemariam to continue our conversation on contemporary challenges facing African democracies. For those who missed the previous episode, Mike is associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park and Senior Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies. Before that, he taught at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and directed the university’s African Studies Center, and also served on the Democratic staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Michael’s main area of research is African security studies, and his regional focus has been on the Horn of Africa. He has published widely on this topic both in academic journals and popular outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, or Current History. His book, “Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents”[i], was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.
As a quick reminder, in the previous episode Mike and I focused in our conversation largely on security in the Horn of Africa, as well as the impact of key foreign powers, such as the U.S., China, Russia, or regional players in the Gulf, on the prospects of stability for African democracies. Today, we begin by revisiting the legacies of European colonialism in Africa in the larger context of asymmetrical pathways of dependence, primarily, though not exclusively, financial-economic ones. How does the insertion of African states in the circuits of global extractivism and neoliberal capitalism affect their chances of consolidating democracy? Can democratization be expected to succeed in the absence of economic growth and development? In other words, if democratically elected leaders fail to deliver the goods, are anti-democratic political and military forces able to attract mass support? What is the responsibility of international organizations in this continuing decline of support for democratic politics in many parts of Africa? Does the reliance on donors in so many African societies hinder the emergence of viable democratic institutional and constitutional arrangements? I also ask Mike to reflect on the critical nexus between climate change and demographic challenges that Africa will face in this century. For it’s imperative for local governments to overcome the currently prevailing unfair distribution of the effects of ecological crises without sacrificing energy security or vital development goals. The latter are also crucial for a rapidly increasing young population, which represents both a challenge but also a promise for democratization on the African continent. Taking our cue from such questions about demographic changes, we conclude our conversation today with some thoughts about diaspora politics and the dangers of exporting domestic ethno-political conflicts elsewhere.
Mike, welcome back to the podcast, and thanks very much for joining me once again!
Michael Woldemiriam (MW): Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.
SR: Mike, let me begin our continuing conversation by returning to the questions on the role that foreign actors play in processes of democratization in the Horn of Africa but also more generally on the African continent. Let’s begin by discussing the complicated relationship between African states and the European Union. The EU certainly bears responsibility for economic imbalances by putting up trade barriers against imports from Africa while at the same time dumping European agricultural surpluses for example all over African countries at low prices, prices that are detrimental to African economies; at the same time, the EU also lacks coherence in its approach to the recent wave of political crises sweeping across Africa. This seems to be as much due to the lack of a coherent European Union foreign policy, but it’s also I think because former European colonial powers, above all France, have a stake in maintaining a variety of dependency relationships with its former African colonies. Asymmetrical, commercial and economic relationships seem to be part of this dependency. So, what do you think are some likely scenarios for change in EU-Africa relations? Unfortunately, it seems that the question of how to stem migration from Africa has become the main issue determining the European Union’s relationship to African states rather than questions of reparations for colonial exploitation or development aid, let alone an interest in democracy promotion?
MW: I think from my perch in the United States, I sometimes don't feel fully qualified to comment on European engagement across Africa. My sense is, if we look at the data, the EU has maintained a lot of its developmental commitments across Africa in terms of the sheer volume of developmental assistance going to various pockets of the continent. (It) remains a big humanitarian actor across the continent too. But my sense is, overall, Europe is declining in relevant geopolitical weight across the African continent. Part of this is about the emergence ofalternative centers of power across Africa. Of course, we've mentioned China and Russia, the Gulf states. Europe is not particularly willing to in a very muscular fashion, play rough with these other geopolitical contestants.
But it's also the case, and I think you alluded to this in your question, that there are divisions within Europe that play out in terms of foreign policy towards the continent, and that make it really difficult to develop a coherent approach. So, I mentioned the case of Ethiopia in the context of the Tigray War, to give you just one example, that I followed quite closely. There are real divisions between EU member states, the EU foreign policy, bureaucracy over how to approach the Tigray War. You had countries like Italy and Spain that were, I wouldn't say supportive, but were more sympathetic to the approach and perspective of the Ethiopian government, and other European countries that were quite alarmed about the humanitarian crisis in Tigray and wanted to put pressure on the Ethiopian government. I'm not adjudicating that particular dispute, but it really made it difficult, I think, for Europe to send a coherent message at that particular juncture.
You mentioned the issue of migration. I would put Red Sea shipping, which (is) really important to Europe at the moment as well, (and also) counterterrorism.These kinds of geostrategic priorities, I think, have drowned out over time, a long-run commitment to democracy, human rights and development across Africa. And there's a sense in which I detect in talking with a number of intellectuals across Africa, a sense in which Europe has become increasingly transactional in its relationship with Africa. And I'm not sure that that's to Europe's advantage in terms of projection of its power and influence across the continent.
You mentioned France. I mean, France has its own unique set of problems because of France-Afrique, and it's continuing postcolonial relationship with its former colonies. And there is no doubt that there is a close interrelationship between democratic backsliding in former French colonies, particularly in the Sahel, West Africa, and France's continuing diplomatic role in those countries.Russian actors certainly amplified these narratives, but it was a homegrown narrative that emerged in these African countries, that elected leaders or incumbent leaders in these various countries were too closely aligned with the French, that were French puppets, agents of French mercantilist interests. And that narrative was used by military actors to topple these particular governments.
SR: So, if I were to continue this discussion of the long shadow of colonialism that is evident, I think it may be also equally important to recognize other forms of dependence today, such as the ones created by circuits of international finance and global extractivism. And these may be more subtle than direct political or even military influences. They're equally powerful when it comes to determining the trajectories of these national economies in Africa. Dangerously high debt levels across the continent have, of course, raised the specter of defaults now that rising American interest rates are sending shockwaves throughout the developing world, leading to capital flight from Africa.
So international financial institutions, such as the IMF, have enforced structural adjustment reforms. But they've also ensured that large foreign investors can cover their losses even at the cost of imposing bailout conditionalities. How does Africa's insertion into the contemporary system of neoliberal capitalism affect chances of African states to consolidate democracies?
MW: Sure. I mean, this is an important angle. I think Africa's debt burden has really reached crisis levels. It's a big topic of conversation at the moment.Africa has been dealing with debt troubles really since the 1970s and 1980s, Africa's so-called lost decade, you saw growth rates plummet, debts balloon, etc. So, part of the recent debt story is a story about private sector lending; if we were to break down Africa's current debt, a lot of this is debt from Western states or international financial institutions, IMF, the World Bank. Another component is Chinese lending.
But the third component, which has really emerged, I would say, since the 2000s, is private sector lending to Africa from Western firms, but not only Western firms because there are other non-Western corporate actors that are quite relevant here as well. And this might have been done with the best of intentions or not. I won't make any claims there. But it is making the issue of debt relief across Africa that much more complicated because now you have to negotiate with a whole assortment of private sector actors that are not keen in any way, shape, or form taking a haircut on some of the debt that they've offered to Africa. And so, that I think is certainly a challenge. But overall, I mean, I think foreign direct investment in Africa will, has been, and is an important part of Africa's growth story. I don't want to diminish the positive role it can play, but it can at times play a negative role as well. We could mention many multinational firms who have really aided corruption across Africa, particularly in the natural resource sector.
The classic case of Firestone in Liberia, for instance, its role in the rubber sector. But the ways in which these firms are unaccountable, not fully regulated in their overseas operations by their governments, engage in corruption, the politics of kickbacks in order to secure very beneficial deals, I mean, beneficial to themselves, particularly in the area of natural resource extraction. So, I think corruption is part of the story. There's also the conflict story, the natural resource conflict nexus, which is oftentimes glued together by international capital and international multinational corporate interests because, this whole story about conflict minerals that emerged in the 2000s in the Liberian, Sierra Leone Civil War, the DRC: how do minerals that are generated by conflict actors get to the international market where they can be sold at a profit and the proceeds can get back to these conflict actors, it often happens through internationalfinancial networks and through corporate actors, right?
So, there is this conflict dimension as well. The case of the Niger Delta in Nigeria is a really good example of this, the ways in which corporate actors oftentimes are not attuned to the environmental and social consequences of their investments, the local impacts, and the ways in which that can also drive conflict. None of this is good for the possibilities of democratic transformation across Africa. And then, the last point I would make is the role of international financial networks and offshoring a lot of Africa's resources and capital. Corruption in many contexts only works if you can get it to a "safe location." You know, the transfer of a lot of Africa's wealth, ill-begotten gains by political and economic elites, oftentimes transferred to banks in Dubai, or London, or in the United States. Although in the long-term, I don't think there really is an alternative to some level of FDI spurring long-run growth across Africa.
SR: So, let's continue to explore, Mike,this nexus between politics and political economy, which we've just touched on. In a recent paper on the crisis of African democracy by Comfort Ero and Murithi Mutiga of the International Crisis Group, they've expressed serious concerns about the possible contagious spread of military coups across the continent. And they feel that this could end up reversing economic and political progress as well. And as they point out, growing popular discontent with governing elites in many African countries are fundamentally rooted in economic hardships which populations are suffering, which have also fueled disillusionment with democracy and thus have lent sizable local support across Africa for military takeovers. What do you think drives people to acceptance of any means to topple unpopular regimes which promised democracy at the start but failed to deliver the goods, failed to deliver economic growth and development, and attempted instead to cement personal power?
We saw this in the Abiy regime story in Ethiopia, but what does this tell us more generally about the inherent challenges of state building in a context where resources are absent, where corruption fuels resources out of the general exchequer into either the pockets of political elites and again then offshore? And where ordinary citizens are seeing democratically elected governments not being able to really improve their daily lives?Can these challenges be overcome when development is hindered also by loan conditionalities and austerity politics? And as you've just pointed out, with multinational corporations engaging not only in political corruption but also failing to pay taxes, taxes which would actually be conducive to infrastructure development and to welfare provisions in the countries in which they are engaged in extraction of natural resources. Do you think democracy needs material foundations which are all being eroded by all of these players?
MW: I do think your question points to the kind of the structural underpinnings of democracies or democratic emergence, democratic consolidation. I think it's too easy. You hear this in the debate about democratic backsliding across Africa, that it's simply a result of kind of corrupt, venal elites, mismanagement of the political sphere. These are old narratives, of course, that go back to the breakdown of an earlier generation of democracies in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, but there are structural underpinnings. There are deeper forces that are not fully in control of African leaders or African societies.
Now, if we look at sort of recent cases of democratic backsliding in the Sahel, for instance, or in the Horn,we have to go on a case-by-case basis, but certainly economic hardship cuts across a lot of these cases,deteriorating economic circumstances. And this was a backdrop to this earlier generation of sort of democratic breakdowns that I talked about in the early post-colonial period. At the current moment, a combination of runaway inflation, increasing debt problems have really put African economies in a bind. So, there's an economic crisis, but particularly in the Sahel, there's a security crisis as well because of particularly militant Islamist movements that are threatening the integrity of a number of states. It was very clear that what prompted the coup in Mali in 2020 was a security crisis. And the feeling that the French-backed government, there was French intervention to support that particular government, were not really getting the job done in combating these particular challenges.
But both the economic and security hardships are in some ways beyond the capacity of governments to respond to. If we look at the economic hardships, the combination of climate change, of COVID-related disruptions, if we look, for instance, at increasing interest rates, Federal Reserve interest rates in the United States, and the impact that has for the price of credit across Africa and the ability of African countries to attract loans and the price of loans, this all has a very significant impact on the economic possibilities of particular African countries. And so, this vulnerability is structural, it's deep-rooted. It's also the case with the security crisis. There's clearly a nexus in the Sahel between climate change and insecurity. It's also the case, this has to be pointed out, that we look at the civil war in Mali,a lot of this is the more direct consequence of NATO intervention in Libya, for instance, which led to the return of a number of militants to Mali, the diffusion of weapons across the Sahel.
So, yes, these forces and factors we've been talking about are eroding democracy that are beyond the control of particular governments. And in these contexts, it's oftentimes the national security elites in military who can make a very compelling narrative about, "Look, only a strong government, strong, capable government led by people of purpose can fix these particular problems,”.And it doesn't help, of course, that oftentimes civilian elites are quite fragmented politically.
SR:Let me turn to another set of actors, Mike, and that is foreign donors. So, it's another “D” to add to our list. It's debt, durable dependency, which are structural obstacles to democracy, but equally problematic is the role of foreign donors. The African Union, however, seems to rely to almost 60 percent for its budget on external donors and teams of advisors with little knowledge and understanding of the local context are routinely employed with predictable, disastrous results. How can one achieve democratic politics and state building, both in an institutional and in a constitutional sense, with such a large reliance on foreign donors?
MW: This is in some ways a 100-million-dollar question. There has been a lot of conversation within the development community, if we want to call it that, about enhancing local knowledge, developing locally tailored development solutions, and about self-sustaining development interventions, sustainability of these interventions. But if we look at, the billions of dollars that have been spent in development interventions across Africa, particularly by Western donors, and you look at the output, we can point to gains, some gains. And for instance, Ethiopia.There's no doubt that there were some gains in terms ofsocial development, lower rates of maternal mortality, higher literacy. But in terms of being self-sustaining and leading to a more kind of stable sort of development and sort of political settlement, it doesn't quite translate. And if we look, there was a period of real gains, butnow the country is in deep crisis.
SR: You did mention a couple of times the climate crisis and the way in which it's been affecting certain regions in Africa. And while African countries certainly cannot be considered historically to be major polluters in any sense of the term, their populations have borne the brunt of climate change, famines, floods, and all kinds of problems related to environmental damage caused also by extraction. So, today, the imperatives of energy security and continued growth for Africa may not be easy to reconcile with global agendas of decarbonization and green transition. And unless Africa uses all its available energy resources to develop, local economies will continue to suffer, and this may strengthen autocracies. What opportunities do you see for African democracies in this very complicated context where they will need to move beyond prevailing unfair patterns of outsourcing pollution, carbon credits, and emissions trading?
MW: There is no question that the climate crisis, climate change is a major constraint on development and democracy across Africa. Historically, Africa has not been a big driver (of climate change). It certainly isn't at the current time a big contributor to the climate change, but it is ground zero for the effects of climate change. I've been talking a lot about the Horn of Africa. If we look at the Horn between 2020 and '23, there were five or six failed rains in this region. The worst drought probably in 100 years led to mass dislocation, migration. Now, some of the few security issues that emerge in this context were also driven by overlapping conflict. But climate change, I think, and drought in this case was a big part of the story. It's also a huge part of the story in the Sahel in the ways that we've been talking about, the way in which the Sahara is creeping southward on an annual basis, increasing desertification. And so, Africa is in this inherently difficult position, forced to deal with a problem not of its own making, in which it fully doesn't control.
I think the big debate around climate change in Africa right now is really about how do we resource across the continent climate change mitigation, but also adaptation, right? And how do we make up for the losses and damage of climate change? I mean, if you take a climate justice approach, which has the philosophical underpinnings of a lot of the African position on this, if you look at recent discussions at COP 28, I think there needs to be a major infusion of resources from the global north into the global south, but Africa more specifically to tackle these two issues. And so, some of the estimates that I've seen between 2020 and 2030, Africa needs a whopping 2.5 trillion dollars, which is a huge sum. And, if we look atfunding levels through 2020, 2021, just something like 12 percent, 13 percent of that funding has come through. That's really I think, at the core of the debate. How do we fund the kind of mitigation adaptation we need across the continent? And it's also the moral question of the obligation more generally of the global north to the global south on this particular issue. And then, there are other debates about how exactly Africa would absorb this funding and actually put it to good use because there are capacity constraints as well on the African side.
SR: Let me turn to another question, Mike, which interests me personally, and that is the relationship of democracy to demography. This has also been something which has been discussed a lot in relation to Africa. This nexus between democracy and demographic change manifests itself in xenophobic, ethno-nationalist imaginaries focusing on mass migration from Africa and Middle East into Europe. And based on current projections, the population of Africa will be made up predominantly of young people. By 2015, four out of 10 people under the age of 24 will be African, and half of the newborns in the world will be Africans by 2100. The aspirations then of African youth will probably have a huge impact on ecological transformation on patterns of urbanization, of patterns of consumption, of lifestyles.
And much of the current migration which is taking place in Africa, is either within each African country or it’s into neighboring African countries. So, we are seeing huge urbanization, new megapolis in West Africa, stretching from Abidjan to Lagos, for example, or it's migration within Africa crossing national borders, not migration from Africa into Europe, as the Europeans constantly fear. What are the main challenges that the pressures of demographic growth present to Africa, in your view? And how could African democracies turn this demographic trend to their advantage?
MW: I tend to think about the demographic picture across the continent as both an opportunity but also a constraint for the possibilities of development and democracy across the continent. Thinking about it as an opportunity, you mentioned the statistics. This is a huge market that is very attractive for foreign investors. That's a pull factor in foreign direct investment. It's also potentially a massive labor force. It can be skilled, and that's a potential to drive, I think, economic growth across the continent. But it is a challenge as well because increasing populations, meaning increasing tax on local resources, increasing disputes over, for instance, land, employment opportunities, it places a huge demand on the state in particular to provide opportunities.
I've referenced the case of Ethiopia a lot in the Horn, which I know quite well. Part of the challenge for the EPRDF and one of the reasons that it ended up collapsing is, it simply couldn't meet the aspirations of an increasingly upward-mobile youth population. In 2018, Ethiopia produced something like a million college graduates a year and simply could not provide the kinds of economic opportunities that this demographic was expecting. And so, it is a real challenge, not to mention the problems of urbanization that you mentioned a moment ago, which is both reflective of developmental change and economic growth, but also imposes or creates huge developmental challenges, rapid growth of unplanned cities, problems of service provision in these particular centers.
SR: Speaking of democracy and migration, I was wondering if we could conclude on a somewhat personal note. Both of us were born in the U.S., where you continue to live. I left the United States with my parents for India at the age of two and have been living in Europe for some 40 years. We both have a keen sense of self-reflexivity about the many implications of this differently dual mode of existence, so to speak. And we also happen to live in an age in which domestic political conflicts and contestations are rapidly related to distant sites beyond our homelands. And diaspora communities can play a decisive role as we know in supporting democratic change or challenging authoritarian forces, but also in propping up anti-liberal democratic forces. So, could you speak about your own experience with African diasporic communities, especially Eritrean and Ethiopian, in your case in the United States, as potential sites of political conflict in their home countries, but also as possible drivers of economic growth and investment in their homeland and with that a of course a force for democratization in the future?
MW: Yeah, thanks. So, I'm an Eritrean American. My parents are from Eritrea, Northeast Africa, borders Ethiopia. Ethiopia is to the south, Sudan to the west, Djibouti to the east. It's a Red Sea country as well. So, it's a long Red Sea coastline. And I've obviously grown up in that particular diaspora, have thought about it in my own personal capacity and as an intellectual, and I come away with somewhat conflicting sentiments about the role of African diasporas in democracy and development in Africa.
Certainly, we can point to examples, evidence that suggests that diasporas play a sort of catalytic positive role in development democracy across the continent in terms of channeling investment back to their home countries, bringing back skills when they return that can help catalyze economic growth. Certainly, we can look at cases wherediaspora actors were really important, sort of the backbone of pro-democracy movements. If we look at Ethiopia, for instance, to allude to that case once again. But even the more recent case of Sudan, (in) the kind of revolutionary upheavals (that) unseated old autocrats, diaspora actors were important in channeling some of those sentiments and bringing it to social media and publicizing these narratives on the international stage. So, that I think is a positive side of the equation, but I think, unfortunately, diasporas are a dark side to the impact on development (of) democracy. It certainly is a case I've seen with the Eritrean diaspora itself, and we're actually seeing this play out right now over the course of the last year where it's been a real site of conflict, of division, where conflicts from the homeland then play out in the diaspora in ways that are even actually much worse than in the home country.
The polarization, extremism for some reason seems to play out in even worse terms when people are outside their home country. Thinking about my own experience as an Eritrean-American, but also beyond it, diaspora actors that for some reason seem quite comfortable with autocracy and repression in their country of origin, which for the life of me I can't quite understand. So, I certainly see the potential of diaspora in democratic transformation, but I think experience has limited my optimism somewhat.
SR: Thanks ever so much, Mike, for being with me and for this wide-ranging and insightful conversation.
MW: Yep, thank you so much.
SR: In contrast to the previous episode, in which Mike highlighted some of the key external powers, such as the US, China, or Russia, that play a decisive role in the stability of African democracies. Today he began by criticizing the lack of coherence of the European Union’s foreign policy toward Africa, which has led to Europe’s relative decline as a significant actor across the African continent. Moreover, it seems that Europe’s long-run commitments to democracy, human rights or development in Africa have now been eclipsed by its rather myopic concerns about migration, shipping security and terrorism. The long shadow of colonialism clearly affects international relations here too, of course, as evidenced by the recent wave of coups in French Africa, in the Sahel and West Africa, where many incumbent political leaders were perceived as puppets of French mercantile interests. Postcolonial relationships of asymmetrical dependence in the broad sense have further worsened corruption coupled with extraction of natural resources across the continent. Mike spoke in this context of continued reliance on foreign donors, debt crises and private sector lending, the ripple effects of inflation-inducing interest rate hikes, and he also pointed to the profoundly uneven and unjust distribution of the effects of the global pandemic in Africa. Failure to deliver economic growth and welfare threatens democratic rule with disruption and societal discontent, which can then be easily exploited by military strongmen and populist antidemocratic political forces. The future of democracy in Africa thus depends on several exogenous factors as well, that calls for wealthy states the Global North taking a more proactive position. Climate change, for instance, requires billions of dollars in resources to be able to mitigate the debilitating effects of environmental crises and to bolster resistance through adaptation without sacrificing any remaining prospect of relative growth. Comparatively high rates of demographic growth across Africa is of course an important factor which plays a role in shaping the trajectory of democracies in the continent. But as Mike pointed out, it represents both an opportunity and could also be a constraint. Whether the aspirations of an increasingly sizeable young population will be frustrated by lack of opportunities or not, that remains an open question. And while population growth can be, and so far, already has been, somewhat mitigated through the channels of emigration, African diasporas can also become sites of exporting and replicating domestic conflicts. In our globalized world, we should therefore remember that diasporic communities could foster democratic transformations at home just as much as they could deepen divisions and undermine democracy.
This was the seventh episode of season eight. Thank you very much for listening. Join us again for the next episode in a fortnight, when my guest will be my colleague at Central European University, Zsolt Enyedi, and we will talk about his new research on the ideologies of illiberalism in Europe and beyond.
Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed, including the previous ones that also focused on the relationship between democracy and the historical dynamics and logics of capitalism. And of course, let your friends know about this podcast, if you’ve enjoyed it. You can stay in touch with the work of the CEU at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.
[i] Woldemariam, M. (2020). Insurgent fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and its Discontents. Cambridge University Press.