{"id":171756,"date":"2020-11-11T18:45:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T16:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/pasha-86-why-its-wrong-to-be-pessimistic-about-democracy-in-africa\/"},"modified":"2020-11-11T18:45:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T16:45:18","slug":"pasha-86-why-its-wrong-to-be-pessimistic-about-democracy-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/pasha-86-why-its-wrong-to-be-pessimistic-about-democracy-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Pasha 86: Why it&#8217;s wrong to be pessimistic about democracy in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/pasha-86-why-its-wrong-to-be-pessimistic-about-democracy-in-africa.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\"><\/div>\n<p>The state of democracy on the continent is often depicted as generally negative. But the reality is more nuanced. African countries represent a spectrum, from relatively stable democracies like Botswana, Ghana and South Africa to problem spots where opposition and transfers of power are not tolerated. There is no single trend. Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Guinea may appear to be backsliding towards authoritarianism, but they don\u2019t represent the entire continent. <\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s episode of Pasha Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy at the University of Birmingham, discusses influential forces such as urbanisation, and what can be done to deepen democracy on the continent. <\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Photo:<\/strong> Democracy word in a dictionary. Democracy concept. By Casimiro PT <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shutterstock.com\/image-photo\/democracy-word-dictionary-concept-1079017649\">Shutterstock<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Music:<\/strong><br \/>\n\u201cHappy African Village\u201d by John Bartmann, found on <a href=\"http:\/\/freemusicarchive.org\/music\/John_Bartmann\/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One\/happy-african-village\">FreeMusicArchive.org<\/a> licensed under <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/publicdomain\/zero\/1.0\/\">CC0 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfrican Moon\u201d by John Bartmann, found on <a href=\"https:\/\/freemusicarchive.org\/music\/John_Bartmann\/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One\/african-moon\">FreeMusicArchive.org<\/a> licensed under <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/publicdomain\/zero\/1.0\/\">CC0 1.0 Universal License.<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/africa\/\">Source: The Conversation<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The state of democracy on the continent is often depicted as generally negative. But the reality is more nuanced. African countries represent a spectrum, from relatively stable democracies like Botswana, Ghana and South Africa to problem spots where opposition and transfers of power are not tolerated. There is no single trend. Tanzania, Ivory Coast and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":171757,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[3257],"class_list":{"0":"post-171756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa-news-2","8":"tag-mypr","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/pasha-86-why-its-wrong-to-be-pessimistic-about-democracy-in-africa.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}