Grandiose Parlor

The African musings on the blogosphere resonate well with issues on the continent, going by the findings of some recent representative surveys conducted in Africa. Well not that anyone needs reassuring, the findngs do show and confirm (to any doubting Thomas) that, the rants of African bloggers are grounded in reality:

A survey of 18 African nations, shows democracy is preferable to any other kind of government. The majority of respondents (62%) said they favored democracy. Other nudgets of the survey - all familiar topics on the African blogosphere - are:

• Most Africans feel that their elected leaders generally failed to pay attention to the people.
• Some deterioration in the support for democracy: the proportion of those saying they preferred democracy over other political systems was 61 percent in 2005, compared to 69 percent in 2000.
• Trend on satisfaction with democratic governments: A decline from 58 percent to 45 percent. Nigeria showed the steepest decline - 84 percent said they were satisfied with their country’s democracy in 2000, only 26 percent were satisfied in 2005.
• Large numbers of Africans perceive government officials as crooked. For example, “Nigerians (75%), Zambians (70%) and Ugandans (67%) saw police as corrupt, only a minority of Cape Verdeans (7%), Senegalese (27%), and Malawians (28%) did.”

Another survey by Afrobarometer (pdf) (How African perceive corruption) shows Kenyan, Nigerians and Zimbabweans perceive the most corruption.

All these are issues being discussed by African bloggers, particularly those in the Diaspora.