[Update]: After nearly two years in Steam Early Access, Democracy 4 has now been released in full.
I'm sure that at some point in your life, most likely while showering, you thought how easy politicians must have it and how quickly you could fix up the country if you were in charge. Well, if you would like to put your theories up to the test then look no further than Democracy 3, a turn based political strategy game that grants you full control of all branches of government and expects you to deal with realistic issues and consequences for each and every action.
So far Democracy 3 mostly dealt with rather stable first world countries but how does the same concept work when you apply it to politically divided and potentially even unstable ones. This is the sort of question that gave birth to Democracy 3's stand-alone expansion Africa which, as you might guess, allows you to take control of various nations on the African continent and run them in to the ground through incompetence bring them to prosperity through clever policy making.
Here's a developer video briefly going over the its development and a bit more information on the game itself:
First of all, despite Democracy 3: Africa being an expansion it is a fully stand-alone game and as such you will not require Democracy 3 or any of its previous DLC in order to run it.
If you were wondering which sort of countries will be available then wonder no more as the developers have announced all of them: Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, Senegal, Tunisia, Botswana and Mauritius. A pretty good number when you consider each of those will have (ideally) a completely different playstyle and approach to "victory".
On the question of how exactly will the African countries differ from those already present in Democracy 3 the developers said that "although at first glance the user interface will appear similar, there are a number of changes (apart from the obviously new graphics for voters and ministers and events) to the game. The voter groups are slightly different, with 'rural' 'urban' and 'women' as new groups, and the previous 'commuters' and 'farmers' are no longer present. We also have a bunch of new events and dilemmas that can take place, and some new variables have been added to the simulation to track data that is more important in African countries."
A small glimpse at all of the choices and policies you will have to manage
As for the gameplay itself I can't personally tell you much about Democracy 3 but I did play and enjoy the original Democracy which, while somewhat unpolished, was an impressive proof-of-concept game that really pushed the boundaries of what a political sim could accomplish. The main issue I had with it is that there was always a "best route" to victory and judging by Steam reviews it seems that the same problem is present in Democracy 3 so if you're a min-maxing type of player do beware of that.
Right now there is no release date set for Democracy 3: Africa but given the amount shown so far and the fact that all of the groundwork has already been done I think its safe to assume it will be in the near future.