摘要
Despite the fact that the continent of Africa is blessed with lot of human and natural resources, yet its peoples continue to emigrate away from it daily on a scale unprecedented due to lack of economic opportunities and political instability. There is a known correlation between political stability and economic viability. In today＇s world, political stability simply means a viable and thriving democracy with all its trappings, however democracy as epitomized by the United States and Western Europe seems to be having a difficult time sinking its tentacles in Sub-Saharan African states. The resultant effect of this phenomena on Sub-Saharan African states is an outbreak of conflicts in its various forms, economic stagnation and human flight/brain drain. This paper seeks to find a solution to the issue of political instability on the African continent and perhaps possibly an alternative to Western style democracy. As a matter of fact, a solution might already be in place. This solution however requires us to look into the past rather than the future. Before the Europeans colonized the continent, Africans were organized into different polities that took the form of empires, kingdoms, chiefdoms and in some instance republics. Sadly most of these polities have eroded with time, however, the chieftaincy system as popularized by the Ashanti continues to thrive in modern Ghana. This paper seeks to explore the inner workings of the chieftaincy system that held together a Ghana that was bigger in terms of territory, more culturally diverse than its modern counterpart of which democracy is struggling to hold together.
