Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

I spent 2 1/2 years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin, in 1995-97, which included their 2nd democratic election, which was the 2nd election in which a challenger defeated the incumbent (in 1991 challenger Nicephore Soglo defeated incumbent Mathieu Kerekou, and in 1996, challenger Mathieu Kerekou defeated incumbent Nicephore Soglo) - so Benin is special to me, and I've always felt pride in their against-the-odds democratic quality. The April 28 election was a betrayal of Benin's democracy. All opposition parties were disqualified; only two parties were allowed to compete, and both of those parties supported the president. This system reminds me of the National Front for the Defense of the Revolution in Madagascar's Second Republic - there were six parties in legislative elections, but in order to qualify, each party had to be loyal to the president and his policies. What's happened since then? The NY Times reports that former president Boni Yayi was under ...

I forgot to post something about my Monkey Cage post on the Benin election on this blog a few months ago: In the weeks before Benin’s April 28 election, police used tear gas to disperse demonstrations led by former presidents Nicephore Soglo and Thomas Boni Yayi, who called for a boycott of the opposition-less election .  The government blocked social media and messaging apps on the Internet. International and domestic observers canceled poll monitoring plans in anticipation of violence — there were two reported deaths and 206 incidents during the election. Boni Yayi called for the election results to be annulled; soldiers in tanks circled his home and fired on hundreds of protesters.  Such events would be unsurprising in some African countries, including neighboring Togo . But these were shocking developments in Benin, a country that sparked a wave of democratization in 1990. The 2019 election fared poorly on two key measurements of democracy , participation and...

Nice analysis by Robbie Corey-Boulet  (World Politics Review) of the run-up to the presidential election in Cote d'Ivoire. Read the whole thing ; here are some highlights: The quiet, behind-the-scenes preparations for Cote d’Ivoire’s next presidential election in 2020 were given a jolt this week by a man many expected would play only a supporting role in the process. In an interview published Sunday by the magazine Jeune Afrique, President Alassane Ouattara, who is nearing the end of his second term, said the West African nation’s new constitution would enable him to run twice more , in 2020 and again in 2025.  Cote d’Ivoire limits presidents to two terms, and Ouattara had previously said numerous times that he would abide by the restriction. But by claiming that the new constitution, adopted in 2016, gives him a clean slate, he seemed to be openly flirting with the kind of power grab typical of other African presidents who are more interested in their own longevity ...

President Buhari won re-election on February 23 after a one-week delay from the scheduled election date. From  John Mukum Mbaku at Brookings : ... the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission officially declared incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari as the winner with 56 percent of the votes to opposition leader Atiku Abubakar’s 41 percent . Abubakar rejected the election results, arguing that the election was a “sham” and that the incumbent’s win was a “ statistical impossibility ” in some states. He also lamented what he referred to as the “ militarization of the election process ” and went on to say that he would take his case to the courts. Nigeria is already a country struggling to deal with election-related violence. How Abubakar and his supporters deal with the loss could have a significant impact on peace and security in the country as it moves on to deal with pressing public issues, particularly, how to end extreme poverty. Fola Adeleke raises concern...

From Christina Golubski at Brookings : Last weekend, in Monrovia, Liberia, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) held its 51st summit . During the summit, Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe was elected to serve as the chair of ECOWAS, succeeding Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson who served this past year. One of the most important decisions that came out of the summit was to admit Morocco into the economic body, “ because of [its] strong and multi-dimensional links of cooperation with West Africa .” Morocco applied to join ECOWAS in January after it rejoined the African Union. ECOWAS, in principle, approved the North African country’s application to join the West African body, despite its geographic location. However, leaders have stated that the details of the implications of Morocco’s membership must be worked out before its formal integration. Other news: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ... pledged $1 billion to ECOWAS countries for gre...

The recent re-election of President  Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, age 73, in Mali reminds me that ECOWAS has more than its share of elderly presidents in the world.  Six years ago Todd Moss and  Stephanie  Majerowicz of the Center for Global Development noted that Sub-Saharan African countries tend to have a larger gap between the president's age and the median age of its citizens, relative to other countries; 8 of the top 10 biggest gaps were in Africa. They speculated that large such gaps could lead to public anger, protests, and government turnover. They noted that that  President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, at 85, was 66 years older than the median Senegalese, and seemed out of touch, and that Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was 59 years older than the median Egyptian at the time that public protests led to his overthrow. In the case of Zimbabwe, this speculation was prescient - the largest gap in the world was Robert Mugabe, 69 years older than the median Zimbabwean, a...

As expected, incumbent  President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta won re-election in the second round on August 12, with 67 percent of the vote, against  Soumaïla Cissé. Keïta had several normal incumbent advantages, including universal name recognition ( "In Mali, even the little children know IBK," says Moussa Timbine, the general assembly's vice president and an IBK supporter. ) and solid economic growth , over 5% annually , over the past few years.  Instability remains a problem in the country, however.   As reported by the NY Times ,  " Islamist extremist groups and other armed militias operate in Mali; it is the world’s most dangerous assignment for United Nations peacekeepers. ...  Mr. Keïta has been in office since his election in 2013, just after a period during which Mali faced an Islamist insurgency, a rebellion by the Tuareg ethnic group, and a military coup. During his tenure, violence and insecurity have spread closer to the capital, Bamako,...