Tyson's ECOWAS Occasional Journal - Politics in West Africa

Whoever wins the US election in November and takes office in January will be the oldest president ever inaugurated. Trump was the oldest president to win a first term in 2016, and if he wins a second term he'll by 74 at his 2021 inauguration. If Biden wins, he'll be 78.  That's pretty old! But septuagenarian presidents are a common occurrence in Africa. When Robert Mugabe was forced from office at age 93 he was the oldest head of state in the world.  I posted the ages of all the presidents in ECOWAS countries two years ago. Five out of 15 were 70 years or older. Todd Moss and Stephanie Majerowicz of the Center for Global Development speculated that large gaps could lead to public anger, protests, and government turnover. We can test that hypothesis over the past two years. Below is the list from 2018; if the president hasn't changed I just posted the new age, and if he was recently re-elected. If the president did change, I post the new president with his new age, an...

According to The Africa Report , "The junta that took power in Mali proposed on 23 August to the ECOWAS delegation a three-year transition, led by a military officer." The junta agreed to release President Keita, and said that Prime Minister Boubou Cissé (who placed second in the presidential elections of 2003, 2013, and 2018) was being held in a secure resident in Bamako.  Keita had won re-election in 2018, but there has been ongoing discontent . As was the case in the 2012 coup, some of this dissatisfaction arises from the lack of security in the north, where there has been ongoing violence that sometimes spills over into Bamako, which caused Keita's popularity to plummet . A rally of thousands , organized by an anti-Keita coalition, M5-RFP , that has been organizing rallies against the president for months, celebrated the coup. A smaller pro-Keita rally was dispersed by the police.  As described by The Republic, "ECOWAS leaders have suspended Mali’s membership, ...

 Mali had its fourth successful  coup last week . Previous coups occurred in 1968, 1991, and 2012.  Last week's coup was against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK). The country's first coup, in 1968, was also against a Keita - Modibo Keita (not to be confused with Modibo Keita , no relation , who was prime minister under IBK from 2015-2017). The 1968 coup was led by Moussa Traoré, who held onto power until the 1991 coup, after which the country held democratic elections won by Alpha Oumar Konaré, who was re-elected in 1997 and then succeeded by Amadou Toumani Touré, who was re-elected in 2007 and then overthrown in the 2012 coup.  So Mali had a nice stretch of democracy between coups number 2 and 3. The 2012 coup was initiated in part by the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya, in part by NATO airstrikes by France, the US, and Britain. Malian Tuaregs who had been working for Gaddafi returned home and helped launch a Tuareg Rebellion that conquered much of t...