The Politics of the Great Lakes

The study of politics in the African Great Lakes is not exempt from the epistemological hardships that often accompany the study of Africa more broadly: de-historicisation and simplification, analogies with the West, a decontextualized miserabilism and poverty porn. Internal political processes, often visible from a bottom-up perspective, allow us to understand socio-political transformation and the meanings that local citizens give to them. In the case of the Great Lakes region, it is a question of understanding the complexity of politics through the articulation of the historical heritage in the long durée, the strategies adopted by the elites in power and the national, regional and international strategies that influence them. It is necessary to abandon an analogic, exotic, culturalist or romantic point of view – that still marks a way of understanding African dynamics that still bears the legacy of colonialism. Such an improved understanding calls for a rigorous analysis comparing different ideological visions and theories of realities with the reality on the ground in the Great Lakes region. This article tries to accomplish this complex by necessary tasks through an analysis of: the state, democracy and elections first, then of the administrations and decentralisation and finally of the political participation of civil society and its expression in the Great Lakes region of Africa.