Democracy for all or a few?
On Monday, July 7, 2025, the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) launched the Democracy Capture Index report, a project I have been involved in. The findings make one wonder whose interests democracies on the continent serve. Is it democracy for all or democracy for the few? Even more concerning are the identified actors actively […]
DEMCAP Report 2025: The Many Faces of Democracy Capture in Africa
Democracy capture refers to the intentional attempts by various actors, driven either by personal or partisan motive, to get institutions/agencies to do their bidding. This inaugural Democracy Capture (DemCap) report presents a comprehensive analysis of how democratic institutions/agencies are systematically being undermined. The report draws on data from 370 institutions across 10 African countries—Benin, Botswana, […]
DEMCAP Report 2025: Key Insights at a Glance
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Democracy In West Africa: Worrying signs, hopeful signals
On September 29, 2023, Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo said this “As all of us know, despite the considerable progress made by the community, in the areas of democracy, good governance and the rule of law since the early 1990s, which meant that, four (4) years ago, all fifteen (15) leaders of ECOWAS States were democratically elected, […]
A Fragile Peace With Democracy?
The Democracy Index, produced by the Economic Intelligence Unit, reports on the state of democracy worldwide. The index captures the state of democracy in five categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. Countries are classified into one of four types of regimes – “full democracy”, “flawed democracy”, […]
Democracy Capture in Africa (Benin, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria)
Democracy Capture refers to the way in which interconnected processes of clientelism, neo-patrimonialism, the personalization of politics and state capture impact on the democratic process – and highlights how the image of democracy is used to legitimate this process. On this understanding, a country can be said to have experienced Democracy Capture when: The political […]
The Russia-Ukraine war: A silver lining for Africa?
The Russia-Ukraine war began with the deployment of Russian troops to a shared Russian-Ukrainian border towards the end of 2021. On February 24, 2022, Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, ordered military operations in Ukraine, arguing that the invasion was to “de-militarize” and “de-Nazify” the Republic of Ukraine. Nine months have passed since the conflict began and […]
Data for Governance Alliance wraps up pan-African CSOs capacity-building workshop on accessing and using data for advocacy
The Data for Governance consortium is a four-year (2021-2024) collaboration led by Afrobarometer with the Center for Democratic Development Ghana, the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and Laws Africa at the University of Cape Town. The consortium recently organized a series of three regional workshops […]
