Why Middle East/North Africa Revolutions are Hard to Replicate in sub-Saharan Africa

The Arab spring, or Arab awakening or Islamic awakening as Press TV Iran so oftenly  calls is quite peculiar in character and form. The question though that begs most ominous is; can this people led peaceful mostly peaceful revolutions like what happened in Tunisia and Egypt be replicated and elsewhere in Africa (Sub-Saharan Africa)?

The most obvious would be a NO. We then have to provide a case by case analysis in order to discover why people led revolutions might be unsustainable to replicate in in Sub-Saharan Africa. The most important factor is cultural though. Northern Africa and the Middle- East by extension with the exception of Israel comes' from a background of homogenous Arabic culture which is reinforced by the fact that the Middle-East is largely Islamic. Well there are pockets of orthodox Christians in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria but then these religious minorities don’t have significant populations to form multi-polar pockets of culture in the above countries. This claim is further reinforced by the fact that sectarian violence and hostilities between Sunni and Shias is not as pronounced in Northern Africa and countries closer to the holy land. This though is not the case in sub-Saharan Africa, sub-Saharan Africa is characterized by myriads ethnic cultures that at times are conflicting at least or sub-Saharan African countries have more than one ethnic community. This situation is further exacerbated by the fact that ethnic identities are important Loci for political organization this therefore means that these ethnic identities view each other as competitors rather than co-operate in efforts to bring meaningful social-economic change in sub-Saharan Africa sovereign states.

Another factor that undermines the social-political organization of the populace in Africa south of the Sahara is the lack of economic homogeneity. The Middle East has well defined economic classes with the Middle class being big enough and politically vibrant obviously this strength of the middle class though comes about from oil revenues that support decent income, education and living standards of people. North Africa has higher literacy ratios than sub-Saharan Africa with literacy levels averaging above 70% for almost all Middle-Eastern countries; the only exception though is Libya where massive sections were deliberately kept illiterate by Muamar Gaddafi. This economic homogeneity of economic classes heralds a populace that is both economically empowered and literate both key ingredients in the development of subjective political cultures among populations.

Sub-Saharan Africa is different in that the middle class is not as politically vibrant. The middle class in itself is divided into distinctive lower Middle and Upper Middle classes. The later class is comfortable with life and enjoys relative decent standards of life; they thus view any involvement in active political protest as self-endangering. The poor in Sub-Saharan Africa are too poor to be politically organized thus they are often used as political tools at the hands of political elites marionettes rather than as a source of different political dispensations

The other reason though absurd is that Sub-Saharan Africa is chronically food insecure. Rather than this catalyzing political revolution in Africa similar to the 1779 French revolution this acts to hamper revolutions. This is because man’s basic concern is survival only when a man’s basic needs are mat does he then begin to think of a wider set of goals that include political freedoms. It also has to be taken into account that the Middle East is an extensively urbanized and that political revolutions mostly emanate from urban populations is not something to be taken lightly.