Towards the Africa we want! The changing state politics in Africa

How does modern public policymaking work in countries still dealing with legacies of state formation and nation-building? The volume explores this question through a state evolution lens that goes beyond neoliberalism’s optimal performance mantra, which has been so commonly used in Africa and similar contexts. Doing so shows that there is much more to how African governments perform than simply trying to optimise policy. Besides introducing this volume, this chapter identifies the various pathways by which the twenty-first-century African state has transformed itself in a democratic direction as aspired in the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. The account includes political developments since 2000 that have been more promising in some states than in others. Despite structural challenges, African states are now taking seriously the tasks of improving the ways government functions, establishing fair electoral processes and expanding civil liberties and public participation, as framed by democracy indices. Countries enjoy relative political stability, and citizens show growing demand for democratic governance. Each chapter comparatively deals with these dynamics using specific cases from the Eastern African region.