Lagos, Nigeria, Oct.11.- Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga has identified corruption, ethnicism, weak leadership and non-participatory electoral process as the bane of democracy in Africa. While saying democracy as a form of government is not new to Africa, he said part of the problem of democracy in the continent is the attempt to make it uniform across the continent and at the same time bring it at par with international expectations.

"Often people talk about democracy in Africa as if it is a foreign process, strange and exotic to our customs and an import that has proved a singularly bad fit for the form it must clothe. It should not be so. Democracy has powerful roots in our continent," Odinga said in a lecture he delivered here Thursday to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Nigeria's Guardian newspaper Limited, publishers of the leading Guardian titles.

Noting that the basic tenets of democracy are universal, the Kenyan PM maintained that "one of Africa's challenges is to embrace the entire democratic values of our different cultures and to adopt them to suit both national circumstances and today's global interdependency."
 

Speaking on the theme: "Democracy and the Challenge of Good Governance in Africa", Odinga took a swipe at the practice of democracy in Africa and condemned the style of practice of democracy by national leaders across the continent.

"It is not that we in Africa wish to be judged by standards different from those that apply elsewhere in the world. That is part of the dismissive patronage we need to leave behind us. The intrinsic values of democracy and good governance and aspiration towards that condition are universal. There is no African democracy. The tenets of democracy are universal", he said.

Odinga identified corruption as the greatest challenge to the full development of democracy in Africa ...

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