The three most daunting challenges the republic encountered were the inheritance of two con- trasting colonial systems of government, which required reform and integration; a general incapacity induced by an impoverished population of which more than 90 percent were illiterate; and a lumpen elite, most of whose members did not un- derstand how modern democratic institutions worked or the centrality of build- ing a public sphere that was autonomous from sectarian political projects.

Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, loc. 473