Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

Some big news in the NY Times and elsewhere: according to a report published today in the British medical journal The Lancet: "An experimental Ebola vaccine being tested in the West African nation of Guinea during the outbreak of the viral disease has shown promising initial results...." Of 7,651 individuals in the study group, 3,500 whom received the vaccination. The timing of the vaccination was randomly assigned, some immediately after being exposed directly or indirectly to the virus and some vaccinated after 21 days (the incubation period of the virus). After 10 days, none of those who received the vaccination came down with the disease, compared to 16 among those who did not receive the vaccination. This indicates that the vaccination is between 75% and 100% efficacious. The "ring vaccination" approach is the same approach that was used to eradicate smallpox. The Ebola victim is "patient zero" and the people who came into contact with the p...

The Economist has an interesting article on violent jihadists in Africa, with this nice map (I try to always include an adjective when using the term jihad because according to Islamic scholars, the word jihad itself does not necessarily imply violence). As the map shows, most deaths inflicted by Islamist terrorists in Africa are from  Boko Haram attacks in northeast Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon, Niger, and Chad. But Boko Haram isn't the only such group in Africa. Al-Shabab is a Somalia-based group that has "pledged obedience" to Al-Queda and has spread into Kenya. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) also has a presence and has launched attacks in Egypt and Libya . Al Queda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is, obviously, part of Al Queda and was launched in Algeria, spread to Mali where it took over half the country until the French dropped some bombs, after which it expanded into Tunisia and Morocco. Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJA...

When I started this blog I tried to cover all of Africa and didn't keep up very well. On January 18, following Tunisia's president stepping down in response to protests, I wrote that "some rulers in the area, like Mubarak and Qaddafi, might want to worry." Both of them ended up stepping down in response to protests or civil war, Mubarak a few weeks later, Qaddafi several months later. In March 2011, I wrote that " I'm fairly optimistic that the military will eventually allow for democratic elections, but they will continue to be a power behind the scenes, perhaps as they traditionally have been in Turkey. They might even arrange to have their role in the political system formalized in a new more democratic constitution." The parliamentary elections were held later that year and presidential elections in 2012. The military took power in a coup in 2013, and in the new constitutions, the military's power is  formalized : "The 2014 Egyptian con...

ECOWAS countries have a lot of presidential elections coming up in the next year or so! I was about to write posts about a few of them but first let's look at the big picture.  Benin: February 2016 . Yayi Boni is in his second term and will not be running again . (Benin's constitution has a two-term limit but every time a president finishes his second term there is speculation he will try to have the constitution amended.) One candidate mentioned recently in the news is Fernand Amoussou . Burkina Faso: October 2015 . After serving as president for 27 years, Blaise Compaore stepped down in October last year in response to his attempt to have the constitution amended to allow for a third consecutive term. Compaore was elected to two seven-year terms, in 1991 and 1998, under the 1991 constitution, and then when the constitution was amended to include the two-term limit, Compaore argued that the two-term limit didn't apply to his earlier terms, so he ran for two 5-year ...

According to www.hotelnewsresource.com  yesterday,  "Macau Legend Development Limited today announced that MLD Cabo Verde Resorts, S.A. and MLD Cabo Verde Entretenimento, S.A., both wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Company, have entered into several agreements with, among others, the Government of the Republic of Cape Verde to develop a 152,700 square-meters integrated resort and gaming facility complex." So China is not just investing in oil drilling and mining, they're also investing in hotels and casinos and convention centers and all the other stuff that will be in this big resort. China is investing all over Africa, but the connection between Cape Verde and Macau in particular is they were both colonized by the Portugese. Cape Verde was a Portugese colony until 1975.  Macau was kind of Portugal's version of Britain's Hong Kong, and, like Hong Kong, is now a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. Anyway, the invest...

More suicide bombings Wednesday, this time in Gombe in northern Nigeria.

ISIS gets a lot more press coverage than Boko Haram does, but Boko Haram was on the attack yesterday and today. Remember how yesterday Buhari's new appointments for Nigeria's top military posts was in the news? Suspected Boko Haram fighters burned down the family home of the new Chief of Army Staff (who was not at home at the time), along with other houses in the village. Over 100,000 Nigerians have fled from their homes in the north-east part of the country to Niger due to Boko Haram attacks since mid-2013. The presence of an estimated 150,000 refugees, who were forced to leave without their belongings and livestock in Diffa, in Niger, combined with the security challenges of the Boko Haram attacks has been a burden on the economy. Many refugees have also fled to Cameroon , including 100 per day to the Minawao refugee camp, and over 12,000 to the Far North Region of Cameroon. Boko Haram is also launching attacks in Cameroon, including a twin suicide attack in the border t...

Nigeria's President Buhari, who defeated Goodluck Jonathan in March (the first time the PDP lost a presidential election since multiparty elections were re-introduced in 1999), was in Washington yesterday to gather support for his related campaigns against Boko Haram and official corruption. Yesterday Buhari met with Obama in the White House to discuss his plans to defeat the terrorist group Boko Haram and also to root out corruption. Obama expressed approval for Buhari's plans and offered support in the form of intelligence and other cooperation. Since Buhari's election, the US has committed $5 million to support a multinational task force to fight Boko Haram. According to Reuters , "U.S. cooperation with Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, had virtually ground to a halt over issues including his refusal to investigate corruption and human rights abuses by the Nigerian military." Yesterday Buhari also wrote an editorial in the Washington Post  in whi...

Starting today, Hissène Habré is on trial in Senegal for crimes against humanity during his rule in Chad  from 1982-1990. During the brutal rule of Habre , who has been referred to as Africa's Pinochet, some 1,200 (according to Human Rights Watch) to 40,000 (according to a Chadian commission) Chadians were killed and 12,000 tortured (according to Human Rights Watch) by a network of secret police known as the DDS (Direction de la Documentation et de la Sécurité). After being overthrown in a coup led by Idriss Déby – Chad’s current president – in 1990, Habre fled to Senegal, where President Abdoulaye Wade (2000-2012) protected him indictment by a Senegalese judge in 2000 from extradition requests in 2005 from Belgium, which has a Law of Universal Extradition  for cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  Belgium filed a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague in 2009, and in 2012 the ICJ ruled in Belgium's favor and ...

Remember how, after Mubarak stepped down from the Egyptian presidency following the Arab Spring protests, there was talk of putting him on trial for treason ?  I don't think the treason trial ever happened, but he was tried for corruption, embezzlement, and ordering the killing of protestors - those were the trials where he was wheeled in on a gurney. He was sentenced to prison but most of them eventually got overturned  and Mubarak's overthrown successor, President Morsi, was put on trial of treason . Anyway, I bring this up because yesterday, Burkina Faso's parliament adopted a resolution , with approval by 60 of 63 MPs present, to put deposed president Blaise Compaore on trial for high treason. Like Mubarak, Compaore had been in power since the 1980s and stepped down in response to public demonstrations. Compaore is apparently hiding out in Cote d'Ivoire. Hopefully Burkina Faso's emerging democracy will work out better than was the case in Egypt.

When I first set this blog up, I was going to cover every country in Africa. It didn't happen. So I'm going to scale back and just cover the countries in ECOWAS, which are mostly the countries I've spent time in.  What is ECOWAS, you ask? It is the  Economic Community of West African States. I thought about just covering the UEMOA countries ( West African Economic and Monetary Union) but that is just francophone countries and I love Ghana so I decided on ECOWAS.  The countries in ECOWAS are  Benin (where I served in the Peace Corps), Burkina Faso (where I attended FESPACO!), Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire (where I biked my first century), Gambia, Ghana (home of Milly's Backyard!), Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali (home of Sekou Oumarou!), Niger (challenging for vegetarians!), Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo (the only place I ever attended a beauty pageant). Here they are in a map, courtesy of Wikipedia: The green countries are the members of UEM...