At its tail end in the 1990s, Samuel Huntington’s third wave of democracy finally reached African shores. Its impact was instant and far-reaching.
One after the other and often simultaneously, African countries liberalised their political spaces and adopted regular and competitive multiparty elections at the local and national levels, even if some of the elections were little more than smokescreens for continued dictatorship.
Whereas before 1990 only Mauritius, Senegal and Botswana held competitive multiparty elections on a regular basis, more African countries bought into the democratic project and made provisions for competitive
