A lecture presentation by Dr. Joshua Kivuva, Senior Lecturer at the University of Nairobi and alumnus of the University of Pittsburgh, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA).

Dr. Kivuval will discuss how the neo-liberal democratic systems introduced in Africa by the Third Wave have failed to democratize the continent. While multiparty systems have expanded political spaces, allowed more political parties and regularized elections in many African countries, the expanded political spaces have not succeeded in institutionalizing or consolidating democracy. Rather, the contradictions of democratization and the opening up of continent's political spaces have led to a gradual re-institutionalization of authoritarianism and other anti-democratic practices, attempts to close the same political spaces, and election fraud, that have seriously challenged the transition itself.