From The Economist via Andrew Sullivan:
The obvious global narrative here is that we have actually seen a rollback of freedom in the last decade or so. But there are two notable exceptions: South America and, to a lesser extent, Africa.
For example, the map shows the Democratic Republic of the Congo as having backslid in the last eight years, but I am not certain that most observers would agree that the DRC was in any meaningful way “partly free” in 2001. I guess we’ve “lost” Mauritania and Western Sahara and Ghana (and again, it depends on how we are measuring these things — one could as easily argue that in 2001 Zimbabwe was still “partly free” but then again one could easily argue the opposite. Either way Zimbabwe has certainly gotten worse.) We have apparently “gained” Kenya (yet again — certainly debatable at least from the perspective of one who closely watched the political explosions there at the end of 2007 and into 2008).
Consider my scare quotations to be evidence of my cynicism about this whole exercise, but what I think it does tell us is that any narrative that simply asserts that things in Africa have continually gone from bad to worse and will continue to do so is based on a static, stereotyped, and too often racist, conception of Africa.
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