Former Prez Kufuor to speak at democracy conference today
Former President John Agyekum Kufuor will deliver the keynote address at a conference on “Democracy, Justice and Development in Africa” at the Great Hall, University of Ghana, Legon, today.
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He will speak on the topic: “The Appropriateness of Multi-party Democracy System for Africa: After 50 Years of Independence.”
Mr Kufuor is expected to set the tone for the two-day conference during which various speakers from different parts of the continent and beyond will deliver papers on different aspects of the broader theme of the conference with each delivery to be followed by discussions.
The programme is the 22nd Annual International Conference of the International Society for African Philosophy and Studies (ISAPS), dubbed ISAPS Legon 2016 Conference. And the conference host is the Department of Philosophy and Classics, headed by Professor Kofi Ackah.
Independent continent
According to a statement signed by the conference organising-committee chairman, who is also a lecturer in the department, Dr Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani, Africa is averagely about 50 years old as an independent continent that had been practising democracy.
“While there have been some successes, there have certainly been challenges as well. A major issue for reflection at the conference will be the fact that multi-party system of democracy [in Africa seems ethnically polarising, fuels rhetoric and [the] blame games,” the statement said and added that those negative traits and many more tended to “frustrate genuine development”.
It said it was the hope of the organising committee that the reflections in the different papers to be delivered and the extensive discussion that would follow each delivery would yield fruitful insights into the nature of the challenges of democracy and justice and their relationship to development in Africa.
The specific issues some speakers at the conference will be dealing with include why parties in government tend to favour demonstration-effect (or cosmetic) projects over projects that would deal with the extent and depth of problems to the fuller benefit of society; why opposition parties, rather than proposing development alternatives, tend to point out only the faults of parties in national administration, and why heads of state ride on incumbency to retain power.
