Africa After Davos: Overcoming Uncertainty and Insecurity
Date: March 6, 10:00 AM
Register for the Webinar Here
From Africa to the Americas, democracy is under strain. Elections are contested before ballots are cast. Public trust erodes as political offices are captured for private gain. Armed conflict, economic volatility, and digital manipulation reshape governance in real time.
In 1987, Richard Joseph named a problem that continues to haunt democracies worldwide. In Democracy and Prebendal Politics, first published in 1987, he introduced the concept of prebendalism to describe the appropriation of state offices and the diversion of public resources to serve personal, ethnic, and patronage networks. The consequences were clear: disorder, group conflict, and economic decline.
Today, the question feels urgent again.
Is prebendal politics no longer confined to a single national context? Has the diversion of democratic institutions toward private and factional ends become a global condition? Africa After Davos convenes leading scholars and policy experts to engage Joseph’s enduring ideas and to ask what they demand of us now. As global economic forums promise stability while insecurity deepens, this conversation turns to Africa not as a peripheral site of crisis, but as a critical lens for understanding the future of democracy itself. This Dialogue will interrogate what is at stake: is democratic governance able to withstand the pressures of patronage, polarization, and power consolidation across continents?
Join us for this timely and necessary conversation honoring Professor Richard Joseph’s intellectual legacy and engaging the urgent questions shaping politics today