The Link between Democracy and Development in Africa: What does Data tell us?

Abstract

This study attempts to explore whether and to what extent the quality of democracy and development are related in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using system Generalized Methods of Moments on data from 36 countries available from various international secondary data sources for the period from 2002 to 2019, this study reveals that the single best predictor of the quality of democracy in the region is represented by the quality of democracy and that political stability is instrumental in securing the quality of democracy, while unemployment erodes the quality of the democracy. Moreover, the study shows that development has a strong, positive and statistically significant impact on the quality of democracy. Findings suggest a need for securing development to ensure that the quality of democracy is not going to be compromised. Furthermore, they suggest that democratic processes and practices need to be institutionalized to make it less dependent on development.