Douglas Kimemia's Africa's Social Cleavages and Democratization is a thick book. The density is probably unavoidable, given the complex nature of the subject, the interdisciplinary approach and the author's passion. As a work of synthesis, the book documents the travails and challenges of Africa's democratisation. Kimemia explains that ‘social cleavages are to be the recurring themes’ of the book (p. 18) and characterises cleavage as ‘normative, encompassing interests and fomenting a strong organizational base’ (p. 163).

Africa's Social Cleavages and Democratization is like two books in one. In the first half of the book (Chapters 2–5), Kimemia presents three robust, semi-autonomous essays that ought to whet readers’ appetites. But the second half (Chapters 6–12) is where the author develops, argues, and presents the theme of the book which, according to him, is to ‘analyze how the politics of identity, as evident in social cleavages and their efforts for political control, have impacted multiparty democracy in Africa’ (p. 14).

Organisationally, the book has 12 chapters; the content of each chapter is summarised in a section in Chapter 1 (pp. 18–21). It is worth noting that the chapters overlap and cover much the same terrains, sometimes using the same material. Chapter 2 presents a narrative of the origins and development of sectarian politics in Africa during the colonial and post-colonial eras. In Chapter 3, the same subject is taken up but focusing especially on the post-Cold War era. Chapters 4 and 5 (on religion and ethnicity, respectively) revisit the so-called ‘third wave of democracy’ era of multi-party democratisation by emphasising two aspects of Africa's social cleavages. These chapters do not introduce any new material. Instead, they appear to be separate essays that the author had done at some point in time. The book picks up a steady pace from Chapter 6, where the concept of social cleavage is introduced and argued. Social cleavage is further unpacked in the subsequent chapters focusing on its relation with electoral systems (Chapter 7); political party systems (Chapter 8); conflicts and political violence (Chapter 9); economic systems, corruption, trade and development (Chapter 10); and the future of democracy in Africa (Chapter 11). Chapter 12 is the conclusion.

Kimemia has provided a book that can serve as required reading in undergraduate courses in African government and politics, and as supplemental reading in similar post-graduate classes. Each chapter contains significant information for scholars, students, practitioners and observers of Africa's multi-party democratisation in the post-Cold War era. Its main strengths lie in the adoption of an Afro-optimist interpretation and the discussion of existing theories, indexes and models. In his definition, Kimemia emphasises that cleavages can be overlapping/reinforcing or cross-cutting. He discusses such indexes as the Rokkan model (p. 167), the Ethno-Linguistic Fractionalisation Index (ELF) (pp. 170–2) and the ‘index developed by Alesina that measures both ethnic fractionalization and religious affiliations’ (p. 173).

This book has a number of weaknesses. First, each chapter seems to stand alone, like articles in a journal, a critique that the author seems to have anticipated (see p. 18). Second, the book can use careful copyediting and close proofreading. Grammatical and stylistic errors, and misspelled proper names and abbreviations, are numerous. There are factual errors as well; a few examples would suffice. The title of Walter Rodney's book was erroneously stated as How Colonialism Underdeveloped Africa (p. 5); the Niger Delta and Zanzibar were inaccurately included in a list of countries (p. 214) when talking about electoral violence; and Olusegun Obasanjo was listed as ‘founder’ of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) of Nigeria (p. 221). Thirdly, the book's operationalisation of ‘social cleavage’ excludes gender and class. These are big gaps.

Finally, readers interested in long, sustained case studies of elections, democratisation and identity-based politics in Africa – or a discourse on sectarian politics and democratic consolidation – would not find them in this book. Instead, the book offers a content analysis of theories and models about African politics, and presents data culled from Freedom House, the World Bank, Transparency International, etc. About this methodology, Kimemia states that the ‘data from these sources is triangulated in order to provide a full understanding of the analysis and ensure that results are more reliable’ (p. 16). In other words, the book does not tell readers many things they don't already know.

Douglas Kimemia sets out to establish ‘that both ethnic fractionalization and religious affiliations have great impact on democracy in Africa’ (p. 167). In proving this point, he has also provided readers with a textbook that can compete well with the 30-year-old Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa by Naomi Chazan et al.