Rethinking the Culture of Peace in Global Politics: From Liberal Democracy to Afrocracy

In the face of global political crises and persistent challenges of political governance in Africa, there is a pressing need to rethink traditional models of governance. This seismic shift requires the exploration of alternative approaches rooted on contextual political world views. Liberal Democracy from the unipolar perspective of globalisation is erected as the paradigm but has visibly failed to establish the culture of peace in Africa. This is empirically illustrated by persistent political crisis in the continent. In this paper, I contend that there is need for Africa to re-actualise consensual democracy in different forms. One of these modes of consensual democracy is what I refer to as “Afrocracy”. Through a comparative analysis of both Western and indigenous African democracy, we hereby recommend a new model of governance called “Afrocracy”. We argue that this hybrid of liberal democracy and African democracy by consensus, could serve as a panacea to violence that hamper political governance in Africa. It is our hope that political theoreticians and technocrats will reclaim the notion and components of “Afrocracy” in the conceptualisation and construction of governance in Africa void of violence. Hence, this article critically evaluates the limitations of liberal democracy within selected African contexts and proposes Afrocracy as an Afro-constructivist framework that synthesizes indigenous traditions of consensus governance with contemporary democratic principles in the pursuit of peace, inclusion, and nonviolent political transformation.

Afrocracy, democracy, federal democracy, democracy by consensus, nonviolence

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