South Africa is hardly proof that democracy automatically delivers development. It inherited an established industrial & financial economy from apartheid, but one deliberately structured to benefit a minority while excluding the Black majority from wealth & opportunity. Three decades of democracy have not dismantled that economic legacy, even with policies like the B-BBEE it hasn’t managed to fix this whilst under the democratic system. Today, unemployment remains above 30%, inequality is among the highest in the world, & violent crime remains a serious national crisis. Crime alone costs the economy at least 10% of GDP annually. These are not exactly indicators of a system working perfectly. And saying democracy has failed in Africa because African countries supposedly “aren’t democracies” is circular reasoning. South Africa has competitive elections & constitutional institutions. You cannot celebrate its democratic credentials when making your argument, then redefine democracy whenever its outcomes are inconvenient. Rwanda is more efficient & better governed now, but is it the typical democratic state? Africa’s failures in my view are actually because we are trying to implement systems that weren’t designed with the African man in mind, so we will always fall short.