The Democracy-Development nexus: How a never-ending debate is haunting Africa
The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism invites you to a seminar by Zelalem Kibret Beza, O'Brien Fellow in Residence.
Abstract
Arguably, creating a liveable environment for its citizens is the quintessential dream of every nation. However, to attain their dream, nations all over the world have designed different, sometimes contradictory, approaches. Among the many debates, who should come first: democracy or development? It is a perennial question. Should nations give precedence to democratize the polity, or they should deal with economic development first? Or, as it intuitively appears, are these two pillars of a better society undetachable? These type of questions apropos of democracy and development are floated by scholars and politicians alike.
In Africa, when most countries are neither democratic nor economically developed, the debate over precedence is even hotter and more divisive. Many African nations are ambivalently looking to the West and East for a better model system. In the midst of this ambivalence and mercurial policy shifts, citizens of the continent get the short end of the stick, i.e. policy focus.
Hence, in the session, I will enmesh my personal stories with the academic works regarding the current state of the debate in the African continent, and show how it’s shaping state policies and the lives of individuals in the ground.
About the speaker
Zelalem Kibret is an Ethiopian scholar and blogger. Previously, he was a Scholar-at-Risk fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, at New York University School of Law. Among other things, his research focuses on transitional politics and justice, traditional justice, individuals in International law, counterterrorism, and New Social Movements and Liberation Technology. By training, Zelalem is a lawyer specialized on Public International Law. He was a Professor of law at Ambo University in Ethiopia until April 2014.
Besides his teaching activities, Zelalem is a blogger at the Zone Nine Blogging platform, a collective which blogs and campaigns on Human Rights, Constitutionalism, and Democracy in Ethiopia.
