Abstract
External actors play various roles in the process of democratization in many African countries. In this paper, I
evaluate and discuss various contributions that external actors made in promoting peace-building and
democratization processes in three countries, namely, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC). I take peace-building and democratization as a unitary model of democratic anchoring in the three
countries and examine the conditions and mechanisms for promoting peace and democratization in post-conflict
societies. I then argue that the model of democratization which starts with peace-building involves many
parameters which contribute to conditions of success, and that this model of democratization remains an area
which is largely open to further scholarly exploration.
Keywords: peace-building, democratization, external actors, anchoring democracy.
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