ABSTRACT

This chapter examines briefly some vital issues that might influence political stability in this millennium. These are the global economic system; political ethnicity; human rights; and democracy. In effect the post-Cold War epoch has led to the marginalization and peripheralization of Africa. In some countries political turmoil, in a globalised economy, induces foreign investors and the domestic elite and entrepreneurs to send large sums of money out of the country at the first sign of trouble and instability. One of the major causes of instability in Africa is political ethnicity, which, it must be noted, differs from ethno-nationalism or the love for one's ethnic group. The issue of human rights and its impacts on stability in Africa has been a major topic of intellectual and political discourse in the continent and elsewhere. In much of Africa today virtually every nation-state claims that it is in favour of democracy and working toward its full realization.