Abstract

Among the different definitions of democracy, one of them maintains that it is ‘the rule of the people’, which is a system of making rules determined by the people who are to obey those rules. Accordingly, then, democracy implies the rule of law. The hope is that, the rule of law concretizes democratic practice, by making it a code of behaviour, an attitude and a state of mind. It is this behaviour pattern, this attitude and state of mind of the people that in turn promotes development. But in the context of Africa, a number of countries have adopted the rule of law, yet this code of behaviour, this attitude and state of mind has not sunk into the behaviour pattern of African leaders and populace, creating a serious setback in African development. The question is; why is this the case? This question prompts us to investigate the relationship between the rule of law and democratic practice in Africa, in order to find out if they have any necessary link with African development. This paper then probes into the dialectics between democracy and the rule of law, so as to understand what kind of democratic practice promotes development in Africa. The hypothesis is that, if there is a genuine democratic practice, then the rule of law is only a part and not really identical with it. Such a genuine democratic practice is more than the rule of law, and African development equally needs more than mere liberal democracy. African development can only be achieved if African democracy is based on African metaphysics.

Keywords

African development, democracy, rule of law, political philosophy, African metaphysics