PerspectiveWest Africa’s Democratic Progress is Slipping Away, Even as Region’s Significance Grows
Rising authoritarianism is curtailing individual freedoms around the globe. Jon Temin and Isabel Linzer write that in an alarming development, however, the region that showed the fastest decline in political rights and civil liberties last year was West Africa, which had long been a driver of democratic gains. The warning signs have failed to spur corrective action.
Rising authoritarianism is curtailing individual freedoms around the globe. Jon Temin and Isabel Linzer write in Just Security that in an alarming development, however, the region that showed the fastest decline in political rights and civil liberties last year was West Africa, which had long been a driver of democratic gains.
They write that over the last quarter century, no region in Africa has made more democratic progress. Generally open elections and regular leadership transitions were becoming close to the norm in West Africa. The reversal of this trend has stark implications.
They add:
Freedom House’s newly released Freedom in the World report, which we helped produce, provides striking evidence of the problem. Of the 12 countries with the largest year-on-year score declines around the world in 2019, no fewer than five are in West Africa—Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria. In Freedom House’s taxonomy of Free, Partly Free, and Not Free countries, Senegal and Benin fell from Free to Partly Free status, leaving Ghana and the island nation of Cabo Verde as the only Free countries in the region. Benin alone lost 13 points on the report’s 100-point scale, a remarkable drop for any democracy.
Throughout the region, flawed elections in 2019 took their toll. National- and state-level elections in Nigeria were deeply troubled; the election commission postponed the first round of voting hours before polls were to open, and the balloting that eventually took place featured widespread irregularities. Opposition parties in Benin were effectively excluded from competing in parliamentary elections, and an internet shutdown and violent state repression of protests further marred the lopsided vote. In Senegal, the two most prominent opposition politicians were barred from the presidential election due to criminal cases that were widely viewed as politically motivated.
In each of these instances, the problems were predictable. In 2018, there were politically motivated prosecutions in Benin, lawmakers made problematic changes to candidacy requirements in Senegal, and Nigeria’s president rejected multiple attempts at electoral reform. But the warning signs failed to spur corrective action.
