Africa suffering in ‘strongmen’ era, says governance watchdog

‘If you’re an African leader and you see all those strong people rising everywhere … you say, why not me too? I can get away with it’

Democracy and rights are declining in Africa as leaders take their cues from the rise of strongmen in other parts of the world, the head of a governance monitor told AFP.

Mo Ibrahim, 80, is a Sudanese-British billionaire who made a fortune in telecoms and ploughed it into monitoring and encouraging better governance across Africa.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s latest report, finds broad progress on economic opportunity and human development over the past decade, but also steep declines in security, human rights and public participation at a time when Africa has suffered multiple military coups and devastating wars.

Ibrahim highlighted elections over the past year in Tanzania, where security forces were accused of killing thousands of protesters, and Uganda, where opposition leader Bobi Wine was “hunted and physically attacked”.

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