Twelve years down the long and winding democratic road, the question still arises: how is the Arab Spring impacting the rest of Africa? Especially, after International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy 2022 underscores that the quality of democracy is declining in half of democracies around the world while the number of countries with the most severe form of democratic erosion is at its peak, including Mauritius. 

Struggles against authoritarianism and for political freedom started from scratch in Northern Africa, while sub-Saharan Africa has seen decades of so-called democratic institution building. However, if elections in Southern Africa are common place, they still remain, in many cases, and to a large extent, rigged. 

In the Arab world, before the Arab Spring, economic advances and security were long considered more important than democratic rights and transparency. Known fact: days before Mouamed Bouazizi (1984-2011) and the Tunisian revolution that started the whole domino effect, the Ben Ali regime was constantly praised by several international organizations for its economic progress and macro-economic statistics. The toppling of several autocratic regimes in North Africa has therefore confirmed one central point : economic growth without political freedom and social equity is no longer sustainable. 

In general, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced high-rates of economic growth (between 5-6%) since the mid-1990s and before Covid-19, but increased wealth and prosperity level has not reached all segments of the population though. Michelle Sieff, a political risk consultant on Africa, pointed out in an interesting paper titled “The African Lions: An Authoritarian Challenge to Development Theory” that “media coverage focuses on high-growth countries where political and civil liberties are relatively well-protected. But if Asia has its ‘tigers,’ then Africa has its ‘lions,’ countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda that are successfully combining political repression and economic development”. 

Despite the “democratic” advances of African countries south of the Sahara on paper, the legacy of “big man” politics continues and still goes rather unchallenged. In Mauritius, we all know who the big men are. If the Arab Spring events could not be a driver for change – since the sub- Saharan democratic advances predate the Arab Spring in terms of democratic institutions and oversight – the fruits of the Arab Spring constitute surely a trigger in the sense that there have been popular protests in more than a dozen African capitals that called for greater political pluralism, transparency, and accountability. Many of those protests referenced the Arab Spring as a model. While the winds of change brought about by the Arab Spring were not institutional in nature, they have certainly reshaped – by rising them – expectations that sub-Saharan African citizens have of their leaders, who tend to stay too long in power, or to share the power among their small self-constituted political elite. 

Many argue that any forthcoming changes in sub-Saharan Africa will not be as spectacular as the 2011 uprisings in North Africa, probably, due to the fact the lines between democratic and autocratic regimes are increasingly blurry. There has actually been a noticeable rise in what is Varieties of Autocratization (according to both VDem and IDEA) – those that combine the rhetorical acceptance of liberal democracy with the existence of formal democratic institutions – like the Electoral Supervisory Commissions or Audit Departments, which prove to be toothless bulldogs – as well as a pseudo-respect for civil and political liberties. This facade is deliberately promoted by regimes determined to maintain the appearance of democracy. We all know how electoral reforms are promised but never accomplished, and elections become a legal way to validate authoritarian leaders. We all know how the free press is often threatened and coerced. 

Sooner or later, the semi-democracies may be forced to become real democracies. The main takeaway from the Arab Spring might well be the fact that no matter how much money you have, no matter how much security you control, it is hard to stop a people from rising against inequalities. Younger generations have a powerful weapon: social media. They are risk-takers since they do not have much to lose in the current game, where the shrinking cake is being eaten only by a few.