Democracy is faltering in African countries once ruled by France

In Senegal, the president tried to cancel elections. In Niger, one military coup overthrew an elected president who remains imprisoned in the presidential palace eight months later. In Chad he was the main opposition politician killed in a firefight with security forces. And in Tunisia, once the only democratic success story of the Arab Spring uprisings, the president sends the state there increasing autocracy.

Democracy is in trouble in the former French colonies in Africa. And the two ways in which it is being undermined — by the elected officials charged with enforcing it, or by coup plotters who overthrow governments — are expressions of the same malaise, some experts say.

After gaining independence from France in the 1960s, the emerging states modeled their constitutions on France’s, concentrating power in the hands of the president. And France maintained a web of business and political ties with its former colonies – a system known as Françafrique – and often supported corrupt governments. These are some of the reasons given by analysts for the democratic crisis in these countries.

While a majority of Africans surveyed still say they prefer democracy to other forms of government, support for it is declining in Africa, while approval of military rule is increasing – since 2000 it has doubled. That shift is happening much faster in the former French colonies than in the former British colonies, according to Boniface Dulani, survey director at Afrobarometer, a nonpartisan research organization.

“People are disillusioned with democracy,” he said.

The terrain is ready for military takeovers. Eight of the nine successful coups in Africa since 2020 have taken place in former French colonies – the only exception being Sudan, a former British colony. Former French colonies have been “champions of coups” but also champions of a hollow pretense of “constitutional order” and democracy, says Ndongo Samba Sylla, co-author of a new book on France and its former African colonies.

“Ordinary people, they are against your constitutional order,” Mr Sylla said. “We call this a despotic order.”

None of the nine African countries considered “free” by Freedom House, a pro-democracy group, are former French colonies. And half of the continent’s 20 former French colonies received the worst ranking of the group: “not free.” All scored lower on the Freedom House freedom scale in 2023 than in 2019, except Djibouti and Morocco, which remained the same, and Mauritania, which recently began holding elections after decades of military rule.

And military rule is back, although junta leaders often speak the language of democracy, calling themselves “transitional governments,” promising elections and appointing civilian ministers.

Guinea, which has been ruled by the army since soldiers stormed the presidential palace in 2021, would hold elections in October. But in February, soldiers gathered in that same palace to issue a decree that threatened to postpone any elections.

“The government has been dissolved,” a soldier declared, as nineteen other junta members and armed soldiers in uniform stood behind him on the palace’s red carpet steps.

Senegal has long been seen as an exception to this anti-democratic trend, but in February President Macky Sall shocked the country by suspending indefinitely postponing the elections for his successor, just three weeks before the elections were due to begin.

His government has adopted tactics used by others to stay in power in French-speaking Africa: shutting down the internet, banning demonstrations, killing demonstrators and throwing opposition politicians in jail.

The Constitutional Court of Senegal the elections are resetthat is now set for this Sunday. And Mr Sall has just released two key opposition leaders from prison – one a presidential candidate.

Of course, democratic backsliding is not limited to the former French colonies in Africa. Of the United States to Brazil, and from Hungary to Venezuela, democracy has faced challenges in many countries around the world. And African countries without historical ties to France are not exempt from this: leaders in Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, for example, do not tolerate dissent.

But what the former French colonies have in common are political systems heavily influenced by French countries with extremely strong presidential powers, which struggle to keep their institutions under control, says Gilles Olakounlé Yabi, the founder and chief executive of the West -African Citizen Think Tank.

“That legacy is still very much alive today,” he said.

In Benin, President Patrice Talon was then re-elected in 2021 changing the electoral rules to make it impossible for anyone but his supporters to run for office. The 91-year-old Cameroonian President Paul Biya does been in power since 1982, after the removal of term limits. Togo’s politics have been controlled by the same family since 1963, despite calls for electoral reform. In Ivory Coast, the incumbent president, Alassane Ouattara, won a controversial third term in 2020 with 94 percent of the vote, in what opposition members called a “sham election.”

Mr Yabi calls the malaise “hyper-presidentialism” and that is true long argued that countries should adopt more detailed constitutions to strengthen checks and balances and rein in individual leaders.

There are also non-French-speaking countries suffering from “hyper-presidentialism,” Mr Yabi said. But former British colonies in Africa tend to have stronger parliaments and legal systems that limit the power of presidents.

The Sahel, the arid strip south of the Sahara, has seen a series of coups. Five years ago, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso all had presidents who suppressed opposition, silenced the press or tried to change constitutions. Now they are under military rule.

Across Africa, dramatic changes occurred in the 1960s, as countries gained independence from their colonial rulers, and again at the dawn of multiparty democracy in the 1990s, which followed decades of single-party or military rule.

The region is in a new “defining moment,” said Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, an analyst at the International Crisis Group who focuses on the Sahel. This time the issue is whether democracy will return to the junta-led countries, all of which have promised elections in 2024 but are showing few signs of organizing it.

Many people living under military rule say elections are not a priority. Juntas are gaining popularity by criticizing France, kicking out French soldiers and media groups, and cooperating with Russia – even as citizens struggle to make ends meet, partly due to regional sanctions imposed on junta-led countries.

“It’s hell,” Abdoulaye Cissé, a motorcycle delivery boy in Bamako, the capital of Mali, recently admitted. But he does not want elections because the junta is working hard, he said. “We have to try to support them and give them some time,” he said.

For Mamadou Koné, a security officer in Bamako, the junta represents “a first attempt by African leaders to completely free themselves from colonial oppression.” Rising prices and food shortages are only part of the “heavy price to be paid for freedom,” he said.

France’s influence on the continent has waxed and waned in recent decades, most recently focusing on the fight against jihadists in the Sahel. But the perception The fact that it is still pulling the strings is real, analysts say, and is driving politics across French-speaking Africa.

Certain presidents and regional organizations seen as French allies are tainted by association, such as the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, a confederation of countries often accused of condemning military coups but not of power grabs by sitting presidents. When the coup took place in Niger, ECOWAS threatened to invade; When Senegal’s president canceled the elections, the country only released a statement encouraging him to hold elections.

The leader of Burkina Faso’s junta, who became the world’s youngest president when he seized power in 2022, recently said that the civilian presidents of countries in the ECOWAS alliance were coup plotters like himself.

“There are enough putschists in ECOWAS,” says Captain Ibrahim Traoré said in December, wearing a red beret and desert camouflage, as he sat on a gilded chair once occupied by his civilian predecessor. “They never followed their own rules.”

Many West Africans agree and are more open to the military variant of coup d’état than they used to be.

In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, juntas are often seen as representatives of the people and their interests, while elected leaders are portrayed as Western – and especially French – pawns.

“There is a sense that France is intervening a lot in the region, and that many of these leaders are in fact puppets of France,” says Mr. Dulani of Afrobarometer. “Part of this disillusionment with democracy is the extent to which people think that democratic governments serve the interests of France more than their own.”

Mamadou Tapily contributed reporting from Bamako, Mali.