Africa is the region of the world that has seen the greatest number of democratic setbacks, with 33% of the continent’s countries showing a decline over the past five years, says democracy expert Laura Thornton.
Speaking to Lusa, the expert, who served as vice president of the German Marshall Fund’s Democracy Hub, said on Friday (15), on the sidelines of the event “International Professors Analyze Democracy and Africa at IEP-Católica [Institute of Political Studies at the Portuguese Catholic University],” that although 24% of African countries are making progress, the dominant trend on the continent is democratic erosion, with several nations transitioning from “hybrid regimes to autocracies.”
Africa “is the region experiencing the greatest number of democratic declines,” she warned, noting that “the democratic model is not seen as desirable” on the African continent.
For the expert, this scenario results from internal dynamics and China’s direct influence. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many large and powerful autocratic states, such as China, play a significant role in causing countries and populations to lose confidence in democratic governance,” she said, adding that the Asian country has been promoting, “through disinformation campaigns and economic coercion, an alternative model of governance,” which she termed “autocratic capitalism.”
“Many of the trends we are seeing are not just internal to each country, but result from external forces with a strong interest in seeing more countries become autocratic,” he explained.
Laura Thornton pointed to misinformation and social media as catalysts for a crisis of institutional trust.
Citing data from Afrobarometer, she noted that trust in government and parliament in Africa has fallen from over 50% in 2000 to less than 45% today.
When asked which Portuguese-speaking countries might face a threat to their democracy, the expert declined to answer, citing insufficient knowledge on the subject, but pointed to Brazil as a successful example of containing authoritarianism.
Following a period of “severe democratic deviation” under President Jair Bolsonaro, the Portuguese-speaking country has, in her view, managed to demonstrate the strength of its institutions.
Brazil is “a truly interesting model of how society, through its various sectors, can unite and rise up in defense of democracy,” she emphasized, adding that the role of civil society and the legal community—particularly the Bar Association—was fundamental in defending the rule of law.
As a strategy for the future, the expert argued that the most effective way to combat disinformation is to “fill the space with positive and affirmative information about the nation [and] democracy” before the false narrative takes hold, thereby building resilience among the population.
