Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

2016 was a big year for elections in ECOWAS countries: Benin , Cape Verde,  Gambia , Ghana , and  Niger had presidential elections. Only in Cape Verde and Niger did an incumbent win (unless you believe Jammeh in Gambia that he should have won as well).  Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria had parliamentary elections. Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal both had constitutional referenda.  Nigeria had gubernatorial and local elections, and Niger had local elections.  2017 has fewer elections planned for ECOWAS countries: Liberia has a presidential election in October and a constitutional referendum planned.  Gambia has a parliamentary election in April (and a disputed presidential inauguration in January) Senegal and Sierra Leone have general elections.  Guinea and Niger have local elections. 

The last time I wrote about Guinea-Bissau ( in September 2015 ), they were on their third prime minister in one month (Pereira was dismissed by President Vaz, then Dja was rejected by the Parliament, then Correia was appointed). All of these characters were members of the same party, the PAIGC, which controls the presidency and the Parliament, but there is conflict between the two branches of government. Since September 2015, the country has had two more prime ministers . In May 2016, Vaz ejected Correia and tried to bring back Dja, but he was rejected again by Parliament.  ECOWAS intervened to help - the Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, held negotiations with the three main parties in Guinea-Bissau. Following the negotiations, in October Vaz dismissed Dja (which was what the PAIGC in Parliament wanted) and in November appointed Umaro Sissoco (which was not what they wanted). The PAIGC and one of the main opposition parties, União para a Mudança (UM), said that another...

Yahya Jammeh, who took control of Gambia in a military coup in 1994, continues to reject the outcome of the election he lost on December 1. Presidents from four other ECOWAS countries - Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone - visited Gambia to convince Jammeh to accept the election results, but to no effect (as of yet). Military action is an option but there are no clear plans from ECOWAS on that front. Jammeh at first (surprisingly) accept the election results, but then he changed his mind. One reason he may have decided to stay is " foolhardy pledges of some of the opposition to arrest him for his many abuses of human rights." Military dictators often negotiate a transition to democracy in exchange for amnesty for any human rights abuses during their rule. Jammeh didn't try to negotiate his exit - he tried to win a fifth presidential election (which is why scholars such as Geddes characterize rulers like Jammeh as a personalist leader). Nonetheless, the opposi...

2012 General Election Results 2016 General Election Results (as of Dec. 10) The two maps above for 2012 and 2016 tell much of the story about Ghana's election results and the regional bases of support for the two main parties. The NPP regional stronghold is in the Ashanti region (the left blue region in the left map), which is the most populous region in the country with nearly 5 million people. (Apart from Greater Accra, which holds the national capital, other regions have populations under 3 million.) Ashanti region's capital, Kumasi , is the capital of the Ashanti kingdom. The NDC regional stronghold is the Volta region (the long region to the east), where the Ewes are the dominant ethnic group. Jerry Rawlings , who led Ghana from December 1971 (when he launched his second coup) to January 2001 (when he stepped down after serving two elected terms as president) is from the Volta region. The other eight regions are relatively competitive be...

On the same day Gambia's incumbent president withdrew acceptance of his defeat by the oppostion in that country's presidential election, the opposition candidate, Nana Akufo-Addo (NPP), in Ghana's presidential election was announced the winner. The incumbent, John Mahama (NDC), promptly conceded defeat and there is no doubt he will continue to accept the election results. Ghana is one of Africa's most consolidated democracies. This election is the seventh peaceful presidential election since multiparty elections were reintroduced in 1992, the third alternation of power between parties (following NDC->NPP in 2000 and NPP->NDC in 2008), and the first time an incumbent president was defeated. Ghana's economy has been growing at 4% , which doesn't sound bad (it's average for the continent), but this is down from 14% in 2011 when the country started pumping oil. Since then, oil prices have come down and the government overspent, resulting in the nee...

It was a surprise that Gambia's President Jammeh wasn't able to stop the electoral commission from announcing he lost the election, and it was a huge surprise that he accepted the loss last Monday, so it wasn't a surprise at all that he changed his mind on Friday . Jammeh complains there were irregularities and called for another vote. No doubt there were irregularities, just not enough to get him the result he wanted. Côte d'Ivoire's president in 2010 rejected the electoral defeat announced by the electoral commission, which resulted in two presidents holding inaugurations and return to civil war, but in Gambia the opposition isn't armed, so they are relying on hopes that ECOWAS will intervene.

To put yesterday's election in context, here is Ghana's presidential election history since multiparty elections were re-instituted in 1992. There is regular alternation between the two main parties, and the vote share has been very close since 2000. When no candidate wins 50% in the first round, there is a runoff between the top two candidates. Counting for yesterday's election is still in progress, but Nana Akufo-Addo (NPP) is reportedly in the lead with 49.5% of the vote, so a second round may be required. In 2009, the NPP candidate won in the first round but the incumbent NDC candidate won in the second round. 2012 John Dramani Mahama (NDC) 50.7% Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (NPP) 47.7% 2008 John Atta-Mills (NDC) Round 1: 47.9%  Round 2: 50.2% Nana A D Akufo-Addo (NPP) Round 1: 49.1%  Round 2: 49.8% 2004 John Agyekum Kufuor (NPP) 52.5% John Atta-Mills (NDC) 44.6%  2000 John Agyekum Kufuor (NPP) Round 1: 48.2%   Round 2: 56.9% John ...

Today was election day in Ghana. The results are coming in.  From the Monkey Cage, here are 9 things you should know about the election. A quick summary: (1) the two main candidates are incumbent John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Nana Akufo-Addo of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). (2) "the electorates’ appetite for democratic turnovers, a failing economy, and several high-profile corruption scandals increase the chances for the opposition NPP candidate." (3) The economy has been on the decline and inflation on the rise. ... (9) Over 1,000 candidates from eleven parties will compete in parliamentary elections.

The result last month in the US presidential election wasn't the surprise of the year after all.  Five years ago, Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh said he would rule the small country for one billion years . In February, knowledgeable observers predicted Jammeh wouldn't be leaving office any time soon. In November, Jammeh said that "Allah elected me, and only Allah can remove me.” As it turned out, these predictions were all wrong. According to the final results , Jammeh received 40% of the vote and the new president elect, Adamah Barrow, won with 43%.  From independence in 1965 until 1994, Gambia had regular free and fair elections , although the same person - Dawda Jawara - won all of those elections, first parliamentary elections that indirectly made him prime minister, and then direct elections that made him president. In 1994, Jammeh overthrew Jawara and won multiparty presidential elections every five years from 1996-2011. Based on those four electio...

Countries with oil wealth often suffer a "resource curse" that can take a lot of forms, including encouraging corruption and violence rather than investment in education and manufacturing, and undermining democracy.  Then there are the problems that arise for oil rich countries when oil prices fall.  From Kim Yi Dionne's interview with Omolade Adunbi, regarding the Niger Delta Avengers : The violence lasted from 1999 to 2009, when the Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations crafted an amnesty program for former militants who agreed to lay down arms. But rather than address infrastructural deficits, ecological destruction and high unemployment, the (former president) Goodluck Jonathan administration basically created a program that paid former militants not to fight. Many insurgent leaders were paid huge sums to keep the peace. Former militant commander Government Tompolo , for example, got a $100 million contract to police the waterways of Nigeria. Foot soldi...

Just as conflict in one country can lead to conflict in a neighboring country due to refugees fleeing one conflict and clashing with the residents of the recipient country, conflict in one part of a country can lead to conflict in another part of the country. In Nigeria , Muslim Fulani herdsmen are fleeing Boko Haram in the north and clashing with Christian farmers in the south. Add that to Buhari's to-do list, along with Boko Haram and the Delta Avengers and other violent groups in the south.

http://nasoweseeam.com/nigeria-removes-23846-ghost-workers-from-payroll/ Earlier this year , the Nigerian government removed nearly 24,000 "ghost workers" from its payroll. Now it's Mali's turn . They've identified 13,000 "ghost workers" on the state payroll. These are workers who died or left to work elsewhere but continued to collect checks. It's not clear to me whether these non-workers had not previously identified because of incompetence or corruption. They are being purged now because of a requirement for Mali's program with the IMF.

The Niger Delta Avengers are an army of unemployed young men who attack oil pipelines if the Nigerian government refuses their demands to send more of the country's oil wealth to the impoverished Delta region. The Avengers   "previously laid down arms in 2009 in exchange for cash benefits under a government amnesty. The government angered former militants (in February) when it cut by two-thirds the budget allocated for the amnesty program which provided stipends and employment training". Yesterday , the government resumed the cash payment program to the former militants. The attacks reduced Nigeria's crude output by 70,000 barrels a day, enough to enable Angola to take over the title of Africa's top oil producer.

While I was writing up the post about Burkina Faso's constitution-writing process, I came across this nice post about other constitutional reforms under discussion in ECOWAS countries. Some highlights : Cote d'Ivoire, like Burkina Faso, is working on a new constitution. The current constitution requires presidential candidates to have two native-born Ivorian parents, a requirement the current president does not satisfy (a law was passed changing the rule, but it was never ratified in the constitution). As in Burkina Faso, some opposition members complain the process is being rushed. Mali is working on "incorporat(ing) provisions of the 2015 Algiers peace accord signed between the government of Mali and former rebel groups" Senegal shortened the presidential term from 7 to 5 years and clarified the two-term limit Benin, going in the other direction, is considering lengthening the presidential term from 5 to 6 or 7 years, and reducing the term limit from two ...

Burkina Faso's president from 1987-2014, Blaise Compaore , was finally driven from office when he attempted to change the constitution to enable him to run for another term.  Following a military coup, elections were held and Roch Marc Kabore won the presidency. Kabore was prime minister under Compaore and president of his political party, but opposed the attempt to change the constitution to allow Compaore to run for another term.  In early June, Kabore appointed a 92-member commission to draft a new constitution. A first draft was to be presented in two months, which means any day now.  Some members of the opposition don't like that timeline , questioning the rush, and demanding a consensual process. 

The last time I posted about Gambia, it was about an uprising that started in mid-April against President Yahya Jammeh's government, including demands that he step down. Two weeks ago, Gambia's opposition leader Ousainou Darboe and 18 others were jailed for three years for participating in those unauthorized demonstrations. The odds of the president stepping down are low, although Gambia is unpredictable. @GambiaRising , meanwhile, thanks Tweeters for not posting #gambiarising when protesting the government. @GambiaRising is focused on improving education in Gambia, not overthrowing its government.

My last post on Ghana was about a proposed constitutional amendment to change the upcoming presidential election date from December to November, and to fix it permanently in November via a constitutional amendment. The vote for the constitutional amendment did not pass the Parliament. It required a 2/3 vote, 184/275, and only 125 voted for the change. The NPP, the main opposition party, withdrew its support, saying that the process would take too long and would shorten the campaign period before the election. Reducing the campaign period may have been the goal of the incumbent party, the NDC, according to Kwasi Prempeh . The country has various problems that the opposition party could highlight during the campaign, and moving the election forward a month would reduce the time available to make that case. (A smaller opposition party, on the other hand - Nkrumah's resurrected CPP - said it was ready for the election to be held in November.)

Legislators in Togo are seeking a constitutional amendment to impose a two-term limit on the presidency. They made a similar attempt two years ago, in the run-up to the 2015 election. If history is a reliable guide, they will fail again. Most Togolese citizens support presidential term limits . And yet their current president won his third term last year, after his father won five elections (two unopposed). The current Togolese Constitution (of 1992) originally had a two-term limit. At the time, the president was in a position of relative weakness. By 2002, however, the president had consolidated power and the constitution was amended to eliminate term limits , so he could run for a third term in 2003.

The Ghanaian parliamentary select committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs is working on a constitutional amendment for the elections to be held on the first Monday in November of every election year. Ghanaian election years , since 1992, are always during US presidential election years, and US election day is the Tuesday after the first Monday of November.  A funny coincidence? Maybe not. Joseph Asunka finds that many African transition elections (the first multiparty election after a period without such elections) were timed to be close to the US election in order to avoid scrutiny. US presidential elections can be very distracting , which takes political observers attention away from any potential shenanigans by former dictators holding multiparty elections for the first time.  Which is not to say that Ghana's political leadership is seeking cover for political shenanigans this year. According to Freedom House , Ghana was only "Partly Free" w...

Variant cover art for  New Avengers #1 (Feb. 2005), by  Joe Quesada  and Richard Isanove . President Buhari has had some success against B oko Haram in the north, but now he is facing more violence in the south.  The Economist reports that: An army of unemployed young men ... is threatening to rise up in southern Nigeria and blow up oil pipelines. The industry, on which Nigeria depends for nearly all government revenues, could be crippled, as it was for much of the early 2000s. Production has already fallen to about 1.5m barrels a day (b/d), down from 2.2m last year, as attacks gather pace. This has helped push the global oil price back up to almost $50 a barrel. And it could spell disaster for President Muhammadu Buhari, who is trying to stave off recession. His budget assumed almost double that level of output this year. Responsibility for much of the damage has been claimed by a mysterious and skilful band called the Niger Delta Avengers... Reu...

The United States may have its first female head of the executive in November. ECOWAS got there first.  The executive office of ECOWAS is the Chairman , who is selected by the member heads of state for a term of one year. Earlier this month, first female president of Liberia Ellen Sirleaf was elected by her fellow heads of state to be the new chairman (or chairperson). Goals for ECOWAS include more trade, financial stability, and fighting terrorism. One topic still under discussion is a single monetary unit by 2020. Previous launch dates for the "Eco" included 2003, 2005, 2009, and 2015. President Sirleaf first won the presidency in 2005, becoming the first female elected head of state in Africa. She won re-election in 2011, the same year she won the Nobel Peace Prize (along with Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakkol Karman of Yemen ).

More interesting developments in Gambia (the last time I wrote about Gambia it was on the president declaring the country an Islamic Republic, but without any changes in the constitution). Gambia has only had two leaders in its history - President Dawda Jawara, who led the country from independence in 1965 until he was overthrown in a coup in 1994, and the man who overthrew him, Commander (now President) Yahya Jammeh. Jeffry Smith and Maggie Dwyer at the Monkey Cage describe the parallels between the situation leading up to the 1994 coup and today - "an increasingly vocal and inspired political opposition, popular protests demanding change, and armed forces with low morale (including reports that senior officers have refused recent orders). Jammeh also confronts rising international isolation ..." One difference, however, is the security forces - they are larger today, report directly to Jammeh, and engage in repressive action such as "arbitrary arrests, forced disappe...

From The Economist: Until this month, Sierra Leone had not seen a real traffic light in more than 14 years. They were all stolen and sold for scrap during a civil war that lasted, off and on, from 1991 to 2002. During that period rebel armies rampaged through the country, terrorising civilians and sometimes chopping off their hands. Hungry for booty, they grabbed whatever they could carry off, from livestock to diamonds, aid shipments, televisions, cars—and traffic lights. So Sierra Leone’s first post-war traffic light, which now stands proudly at a busy crossroads in downtown Freetown, is more than just a tool to ease congestion. The president’s spokesman, Abdulai Bayraytay, says it represents “a transformation. ..."

Donald Trump is highly unusual in American presidential politics in that he is not a politician (nor a war hero, which is the historically most common exception).  In Benin, however, outsiders are a regular feature in presidential politics. Claire Adida gives a summary in her post about Benin's election. Apart from Kerekou, who led Africa for almost 20 years before democratization and 8 years after democratization, all of Benin's presidents since democratization have been economists, and now it has a businessman. The March election was, in Adida's terms, a campaign between Zinsou, "The Wrong Kind of Outsider" (too French), and Talon, "The Ironic Outsider" (Benin's wealthiest man, who made his fortune in part through connections with political insiders).

I wrote a longer post on Benin's presidential election for the Washington Post's Monkey Cage - you can read it HERE .  I was flattered that former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan liked the post enough that he tweeted it .  One of the commenters was very kind in making a correction: Prime Minister Zinsou is the nephew, not the son, of former president Zinsou. 

I didn't see that coming! Patrice Talon won the run-off election in Benin. I was pretty sure Lionel Zinsou would win, even though he was born in France, spent most of his life in France, and had never been elected to office before. He was appointed Prime Minister just 9 months ago, as the outgoing president, Yayi Boni, was grooming him to succeed him to the presidency. Although Zinsou, from that description, doesn't sound like he would be a strong presidential candidate, Patrice Talon doesn't either . He also had never run for office before. He had been a major supporter of Yayi Boni, helping finance his first two elections, before they had a falling out. Talon accused Yayi Boni of trying for a third term (Benin has a two-term limit) and Yayi Boni accused Talon of embezzling $20 million and of conspiring to assassinate the president with poison. Before entering the presidential race, Talon was in exile in France for three years. So although Zinsou didn't seem ...

Wow, there really are a lot of big elections in ECOWAS countries today. Senegal is holding a referendum on constitutional reform today. The referendum would reduce the presidential term from seven to five years, would put an age limit (75) on presidential candidates, and would allow independents to run. This all sounds like it is reducing the power of the president, but President Macky Sall had promised when elected to reduce the length of his own term, but instead the reform on today's ballot would begin with the next elected president, starting in 2019. So supporters of the president are pushing for a "yes" vote, and opponents are pushing for a "no." UPDATE : The referendum passed.

Wow, there are a lot of elections in the ECOWAS countries today! Cape Verde is having a parliamentary election today . Cape Verde has a semi-presidential system, with a president and a prime minister. Today's election will determine who controls the parliament and therefore the prime minister. The African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) party has controlled the parliament since 2001, but the main opposition party, Movement for Democracy (MpD), reportedly has a chance of retaking control. Current President Jorge Carlos Fonseca, who won the presidency in 2011, is a MpD member, meaning the government has been " cohabitating " since 2001. Cape Verde is one of the most democratic countries in Africa, and also a developmental success, having achieved a 100 percent basic education rate. UPDATE : Big results! From Reuters : "Cape Verde' main opposition Movement for Democracy (MpD) party won parliamentary elections, results showed overnigh...

Voters in Niger choose their president today in a run-off election! Unlike in Benin, this one has an incumbent running, and there have been some troubling events, including the jailing of a major opposition candidate. See my previous posts and some great posts by Lisa Mueller at the Monkey Cage for details! UPDATE: The incumbent wins in a landslide, with 92 percent. 

Voters make the final decision today for Benin's fourth president since multiparty elections were re-introduced in 1991. My guess is Zinsou will win, given his endorsement by the ruling party and the main opposition party, but you never know. See my previous posts for details!

As expected, none of the 33 candidates competing in Benin's presidential election last Sunday were able to achieve a majority on the first ballot. Also as expected, Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou received a plurality, with 28.4% of the vote. Zinsou is outgoing president Yayi Boni's chosen successor, but he has been Prime Minister for less than a year and before that he was a banker in France, where he was born and raised (although he was also a Special Advisor to President Yayi Boni from 2006-2011; he is also the son of a former president of Benin). Placing second, with 24.8% of the vote , was businessman Patrice Talon . Talon was once a major supporter of President Yayi Boni, until they had a falling out in 2012, due to allegations of a poisoning plot and Yayi Boni's hopes for a third term. So Zinsou and Talon, each with more success in business than politics and a history with the outgoing president (himself a former banker), will face off in the coming weeks.

After a week delay for distribution of voting cards, Benin voters began voting today for president. The voting has been calm - Benin has peacefully elected three new presidents (and two incumbents) since it democratized twenty-five years ago. Benin's electoral system is modeled on the French system - if no candidate wins a majority in the first round, there will be a run-off between the top two candidates. Since the country re-introduced multiparty presidential elections in 1991, four of five presidential elections have resulted in a run-off. The exception was 2011, when Yayi Boni won re-election in the first round with 53% of the vote. With no incumbent running and some 33 candidates competing, it seems like the first round will be followed by a runoff. The frontrunner is Lionel Zinsou , who is Yayi Boni's successor, current prime minister, and endorsed by Adrien Houngbedji, who has placed second or third in the past four presidential elections. Other prominent candi...

In a famous paper , Mancur Olson notes that governments in successful democracies and dictatorships behave more like stationary bandits than roving bandits. "In a world of roving banditry there is little or no incentive for anyone to produce or accumulate anything that may be stolen and, thus, little for bandits to steal. Bandit rationality, accordingly, induces the bandit leader to seize a given domain, to make himself the ruler of that domain, and to provide a peaceful order and other public goods for its inhabitants, thereby obtaining more in tax theft than he could have obtained from migratory plunder." Boko Haram has been behaving like roving bandits, and they are paying the price. The NY Times reports: After rampaging across the region for years , forcing more than two million people to flee their homes and farms, Boko Haram appears to be falling victim to a major food crisis of its own creation. Farmers have fled, leaving behind fallow fields. Herdsmen have reroute...

Nigeria's President Buhari promised last year to defeat Boko Haram with the help of a Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF). As shown in the Reuters maps above, Buhari had dramatic success in the months after he first took office in taking most of the territory held by Boko Haram. Since then, however, Boko Haram has switched tactics, using hit-and-run attacks. For example, on Saturday Boko Haram attacked a village in Northern Nigeria and killed almost a hundred people. The Task Force that was supposed to help defeat Boko Haram by the end of 2015 has not yet mobilized and is underfunded . Last year a budget of $700 million was announced for the MNJTF, but so far donors, including Nigeria and France, have only pledged $250 million. In the meantime, armies from Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Cameroon and some troops from the US have had successes against Boko Haram, but because the insurgents take advantage of porous borders to move back and forth between countries, a coordinated e...

Burundi is in danger of experiencing a genocide between Tutsis and Hutus, sparked by the president's election for a third term last summer (boycotted by the opposition). The constitution limits president's to two terms, but the president decided his first term didn't count because he was elected indirectly by the parliament instead of directly by the voters. The African Union charter allows a peacekeeping force to be sent by other AU nations if there is risk of serious violence, such as a genocide, even if it is against the will of the country's government. Burundi President Nkurunziza doesn't want some foreign troops interfering. Other presidents with extremely questionable legitimacy, such as Gambia's President Yahya Jammeh , would like presidents to have the prerogative of keeping meddling peacekeepers out when violence breaks out.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Lionel Zinsou , who has been prime minister for around 6 months, is President Yayi Boni's chosen successor and is considered the frontrunner, in a presidential field with almost 50 contestants. On Saturday, Adrien Houngbedji and his PRD party have thrown their support behind Zinsou. Houngbedji has run for president in all five presidential elections Benin has held since multiparty elections were re-introduced in 1991. In 1996 and 2001 he placed third, and in 2006 and 2011 he placed second behind Yayi Boni. So his endorsement is a big deal. The election is February 28.  

I'm on my way to my daughter's rock concert so I'll add to this later - Nice Monkey Cage post from Lisa Mueller on the security situation in Niger, where a presidential election is scheduled for February 21. UPDATE: Issoufou is favored to win, but there are two fairly strong candidates running against him. On the other hand, one of those two challengers was jailed for accusations of baby trafficking , prompting a lawyers' strike . Mueller notes that another presidential candidate, a physician, is being investigated as a suspect in Burkina Faso's recent bombing, after he tended to victims of the bomb blast, and in December Issoufou sacked nine military officers in December for a suspected coup plot. The recent military coup in neighboring Burkina Faso  just before that country's presidential election can't be far from his mind. So Issoufou obviously isn't feeling safe. Apart from the security of his office, Issoufou needs to worry about the relat...

The Economist reports on Gambia's president announcing that the country is now an Islamic Republic. A little information about Gambia - it has fewer than 2 million people, it had what many considered free and fair elections from independence until 1984 under Dawda Jawara, until he was overthrown in a military coup by the current president, Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh. Jammeh proclaimed Gambia an Islamic Republic on December 15, but the secular constitution is so for unaltered. A group of Islamic scholars, the Supreme Islamic Council, was deployed to stir up support for the decision, but it doesn't sound like Jammeh (who I'm pretty certain is not an Islamic Scholar) is going to give them any power over the presidency. Speculation about the reason for the change seems to focus on non-spiritual motives. One of Gambia's main industries is tourism (it has some nice beaches ), but the Ebola scare in nearby countries hurt that sector of the economy, and Western donors h...

The Monkey Cage has a nice post by Arsène Brice Bado summarizing the challenges facing Burkina Faso's first president in nearly 30 years. It's a short article/listicle, so you might want as well go ahead and take a look, but here it is in 30 seconds or less:

Soldiers stand guard in front of the Splendid Hotel after an attack on the hotel and a restaurant in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, January 18, 2016. REUTERS/JOE PENNEY President Kobara is off to a tough start. Twenty-nine civilians from seven countries were killed in a violent terrorist attack in the nation's capital. "Officials have not yet been able to determine whether al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and al Mourabitoun, groups that claimed responsibility for both attacks, used a local jihadist cell or sent fighters from northern Mali." AQIM is 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. I believe this would be AQIM's first attack in Burkina Faso. UPDATE: The Monkey Cage has a nice extended post about what the attack means for Burkina Faso - consequences, challenges, etc. Check it out. 

People stand in front of a campaign poster for Burkina Faso presidential candidate Roch Marc Kabore in Ouagadougou. Photograph: Joe Penney/Reuters Before I started falling behind on my "Daily Journal," I made quite a few posts on the Burkina Faso election, which was originally to be held in October, but delayed by a military coup , which didn't last long.   The election was rescheduled for November, and was won in the first round by Roch Marc Kabore with 53% of the vote . Kabore was favored to win since last summer. Under former president Blaise Compaore, who ruled from 1987-2014, Kabore had a number of top posts, including prime minister (1994-1996), president of the National Assembly (2002-2012), and president of Compaore's ruling party, Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP). In January 2014, Kabore was among those who opposed the attempted amendment to the constitution to enable Compaore to run for a 3rd term. Kabore resigned from the CDP and started...

Hama Amadou, a former speaker of the National Assembly arrested in November in connection with a probe into a ring of elites accused of obtaining new-borns from “baby factories” in neighbouring Nigeria. Niger has a presidential election on February 21. Last Saturday, Niger’s constitutional court approved 15 candidates for the election, "including key opponent Hama Amadou, who was imprisoned two months ago upon return from a year-long exile." Amadou was arrested on charges of procuring babies from "baby factories" in Nigeria. Amadou has been both an ally and an opponent of president Mahamadou Issoufou . In 2011, he ran for president against Issoufou and placed third (with 20% of the vote); he s upported Issoufou against Seyni Oumarou in the run-off, helping Issoufou win his first term as president. He was elected President of the National Assembly as an ally of Issoufou in 2011 and held the post until 2014, but in 2013 he went into the opposition. In August...

You know how the longer you wait to do something, the bigger the job becomes, and so you keep delaying, and then the job gets even bigger? Know what I'm talking about? If not, you're not a procrastinator . My point is - I've been meaning since Thanksgiving to do a big catch-up post for all 16 ECOWAS countries, and every day I've delayed, something has happened in each of those countries. So I give up. Let's just talk about Benin's upcoming election. Last summer I mentioned there was a Beninois candidate for every card in the deck . Now there are just 48 - four of them didn't do their paperwork right or something. But 48 is still a record! Imagine what that debate stage will look like! Lionel Zinsou , who has been prime minister for around 6 months, is President Yayi Boni's chosen successor and is considered the frontrunner. Until he was appointed prime minister, Zinsou didn't have a lot of experience in politics - his background is in economic...