ETHNO-RELIGIOUS CONFLICT, POLITICAL INSTABILITY AND AFRICA’S DILEMMA IN SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY

Abstract

Ethno-religious conflict is a perennial challenge most post-colonial African countries are encountering since their independence. African leaders, through intractable conflicts, mismanaged the human and material resources; and ironically fanned ethno-religious conflicts to sustain violence, control political power and manage resources. Conflict brews political instability and ethnic groups compete to capture state power. The military has been the veritable ethnic-tool to capture political power. Therefore, African states had been under military siege for decades. This truncated democracy and stunted human capital development. Although democratic tenets were misapplied by political leaders, the army is not a viable alternative to democracy. In spite of its abundant resources, Africa is cursed with bad leaders. The objective of the study was to investigate the nexus between ethno-religious conflicts and political development in Africa by analyzing the cases of Rwanda and Kenya. Ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study. The study x-rayed factors undermining African development. It revealed that African conflicts have depopulated the continent’s workforce, destroyed developmental infrastructures, increased crime rate, and high mortality rate. Implications are political instability, currency devaluation, lack of internal investors, and low inflow of direct foreign investment, bad governance,