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Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso’s election is just the beginning of its transition

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Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, a former prime minister, will become Burkina Faso's new president.
Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, a former prime minister, will become Burkina Faso’s new president.

After holding a free and relatively trouble-free election on November 29th, Burkina Faso has elected a new, civilian president: Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.burkina faso flag icon

That, in itself, is a milestone for a country that has very little experience with democracy or even civilian leaders, and that just two months ago faced yet another militant coup designed to throw the country’s elections off track. Kaboré is just the second civilian Burkinabé leader since the country gained independence from France in 1960.

Supporters and opponents alike were celebrating in the streets of in Ouagadougou this weekend to mark the second fully contested election in the country’s post-independence history.

Kaboré’s election, however, is just the first step in what could still be a very troubled path to stronger governing institutions, committed democracy and greater development in Burkina Faso, a country of over 17 million people, though one of the world’s poorest (the International Monetary Fund estimates per-capita nominal GDP at just $631).

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Burkina Faso’s latest political chapter began in October 2014, when long-serving president Blaise Compaoré fled from office in the wake of massive protests against his bid to win yet another reelection. Compaoré, then a young military leader, helped Thomas Sankara take power in a 1983 coup — only to force the leftist Sankara out in 1987, killing his once-close friend Sankara in the process and transforming Sankara into something of a martyr of the African left.

When Compaoré fled power last autumn, he was at the time the world’s seventh-longest ruling leader. Despite his autocratic rule at home, he had become an ally to the United States and to European powers at a time when west Africa has increasingly become a security concern for Western governments anxious to halt the rise of radical jihadist groups from Nigeria to the Sahel. The election comes in the aftermath of a deadly terrorist attack in Bamako, the capital of Mali, Burkina Faso’s neighbor to the north and the west. But the election also comes after the peaceful reelection of Ivorian president Alasanne Ouattara and ahead of scheduled Ghanian elections in 2016. Continue reading Burkina Faso’s election is just the beginning of its transition →

Burkina Faso

Military coup casts doubt on Burkina Faso elections

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Planned elections in Burkina Faso on October 11 do not seem likely to move forward after the country’s interim president, Michel Kafando, was ousted Thursday by the military.burkina faso flag icon

Kafando came to the presidency only last November, following a military coup against Burkina Faso’s leader of 27 years,  Blaise Compaoré, when the longtime strongman tried to amend the constitution to permit him to run for reelection yet again. Initially, during the October 2014 coup, it was Isaac Zida, a leading member of the Régiment de sécurité présidentielle (RSP, Presidential Security Regiment), a high-powered security forced that Compaoré formed as a counterweight to the regular army, who quickly emerged as the country’s interim leader. International pressure forced Zida and the RSP to hand power to Kafando, Burkina Faso’s long-serving ambassador to the United Nations, with Zida serving as interim prime minister.

That arrangement seemed to be working, with Burkina Faso — a landlocked country of over 17 million people in west Africa that neighbors Mali and Ghana — preparing for elections next month.

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RELATED: Sankara ghost hangs over Burkina Faso turmoil

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Nevertheless, Burkinabés woke up Thursday morning to the sight of lieutenant colonel Mamadou Bamba (pictured above) delivering a terse statement on behalf of the newly christened ‘National Council for Democracy’ that had tasked itself with ‘put[ting] an end’ to the ‘deviating’ transitional regime and establishing a government that would ‘restore political order’ for the purpose of holding ‘inclusive and peaceful’ elections.  Continue reading Military coup casts doubt on Burkina Faso elections →

Gambia

Who is Yahya Jammeh? A look at Gambia’s erratic dictator.

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When you start to add up all the abuses of Gambian president Yahya Jammeh’s 20-year dictatorship, you might think it’s a real shame that Tuesday’s coup attempt has apparently failed.Gambia

Though Gambian officials are reporting that the coup has failed, and other officials are denying that a coup attempt even took place, it’s hard to know just exactly what is happening in the capital city of Banjul. Jammeh is said to be out of the country, though conflicting reports have placed him on official business in France as well as on a personal trip to Dubai. In short, no one know what’s happened (or may still be going on in Gambia) and no one knows where Jammeh is currently located.

Gambia served for centuries as a Portuguese trading colony before it became a British protectorate in 1894. An overwhelmingly Muslim country, it won its independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, and it’s known just two leaders in that time — Dawfa Jawara, who ruled as prime minister or president from 1965 to 1994, and his successor, Jammeh, who ousted Jawara in a chiefly bloodless coup at the tender age of 29. What followed could hardly be called bloodless, however.

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Since 1994, Jammeh’s record has been dotted with human rights violations that rank among some of the worst in sub-Saharan Africa, in marked contrast to the conciliatory approach Jawara deployed for the first three decades of post-independence Gambia. Though Jammeh (pictured above earlier this year with US president Barack Obama) might not rise to the level of abuse reserved for butchers like former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, former Liberian president Charles Taylor or former CAR president Jean-Bédel Bokassa, he must certainly rank high on the list of Africa’s most brutal leaders today, earning international scorn for his approach to the death penalty, press freedom and LGBT rights, in particular: Continue reading Who is Yahya Jammeh? A look at Gambia’s erratic dictator. →

Burkina Faso

Sankara ghost hangs over Burkina Faso turmoil

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sankaraPhoto credit to Pascal George/AFP.

Only seven world leaders have held office longer than Burkina Faso’s president Blaise Compaoré. His place on that list, however, may be coming to a swift end today, amid chaotic protests in the capital city of Ouagadougou, when protesters set the parliament on fire.burkina faso flag icon

For the entirety of his 27-year rule in the Sahelian country, the specter of his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, hung over his reign, possibly now more than ever — the equatorial Banquo to Compaoré’s Macbeth.

Sankara took power, like every single one of his predecessors, in a coup. He did so, in 1983, with Compaoré’s help, and with the charisma of a post-independence African ‘Che’ Guevara, promising to bring an honest and socialist government to his country, which he renamed ‘Burkina Faso,’ or ‘the land of the honest people,’  instead of the more colonial Upper Volta (‘Haute-Volta‘).

Though Sankara was hardly democratic, he enjoyed a groundswell of genuine support, and his brutal assassination just four years later (for which most analysts blame Compaoré) ended a burst of dynamic governance through which Sankara attempted nothing less than a renaissance for Burkina Faso. With mixed roots among both the Mossi and Fulani ethnic groups, Sankara personified the two dominant peoples that comprise a majority of Burkina Faso’s population.

In addition to giving the country a new name and a new national anthem (Sankara, a guitar player, wrote it himself), he turned to an ambitious program of social welfare initiatives. He vaccinated the country’s children against diseases like yellow fever, started a national literacy campaign, took steps to reverse desertification through ‘green’ policies, redistributed land for greater crop production and, in a nod to women’s rights, outlawed female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages, problems that still plague many sub-Saharan Africa countries today. He was also the first African leader to recognize publicly the health threat that HIV/AIDS could cause. Two decades later, by contrast, South African president Thabo Mbeki was still denying the scientific link between HIV and AIDS.

Known for his personal integrity, he sold the government’s fleet of Mercedes and replaced them with much-cheaper Renaults. He opposed foreign aid, but simultaneously demanded debt forgiveness from France and other Western countries.

To be fair, Sankara was no saint. Continue reading Sankara ghost hangs over Burkina Faso turmoil →