Africa’s New Age of Authoritarianism

By Jason McLure : June 18, 2010 Why Democracy Isn’t Working Despite an economic renaissance, much of Africa is drifting toward a new age of authoritarianism. A government supporter of Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front at a demonstration. To a casual observer, the tens of thousands of people who poured into the central square of Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on May 25 to peacefully celebrate the country’s elections might have been mistaken for a massive symbol of democratic progress in a poor and troubled part of the world.