Africa peace and conflict journal, v. 5, no. 1, June 2012

The interface between democracy and development remains a heated subject in the policy and academic discourses in Africa. Where nation building has taken place via the expediency and capital of developmentalism, issues of democratic governance have not been seriously entertained; worse still, in some countries the leadership essentially banned popular political participation or introduced autocratic regimes, including one-party systems, on the grounds that multiparty politics was divisive. For economic progress to be registered and human development to bear fruit in Africa, it is imperative to bring about political stability and political integration at the regional level