Ethnicity Blights Democratization and Nation-Building in Africa

One of the problems undermining liberal democracy in Africa is ethnicity. In fact, despite the rise of multiparty democracy on the continent, the electoral decision-making processes are often defined by vitriolic rivalries between clans and cultural groupings. While agreeing that ethnicity predates colonial Africa, its prominence today is arguably a by-product of the balkanization of Africa by European powers. The arbitrary borders created at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 confined different ethnic groups to specific states. Many of those boundaries enclosed hundreds of diverse and independent groups with no common history, culture, language or religion....