Examining Togo’s Implausible Election Results
Despite opposition counts showing they won 72 percent of the vote, Faure Gnassingbé was declared the winner of Togo’s presidential election, advancing his bid to continue his family’s 53-year rule.
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Despite opposition counts showing they won 72 percent of the vote, Faure Gnassingbé was declared the winner of Togo’s presidential election, advancing his bid to continue his family’s 53-year rule.
Popular demand to end the 50-year rule of the Gnassingbé family puts the spotlight on Togo’s authoritarian practices and ECOWAS’s vow to uphold democratic norms.
Togolese citizens are ready to join West Africa’s democratic trend but face resistance from their long-time leader and politicized security sector.
African leaders who hold power indefinitely often employ cults of personality to consolidate power, demand personal fealty, and systematically undermine independent governance institutions.
The spike in militant Islamist group violence in Africa has been marked by a 68-percent increase in fatalities involving civilians, highlighting the need for more population-centric stabilization strategies.
Continuing a decade-long upward trend, violent events linked to militant Islamist groups in Africa increased by 22 percent while fatalities surged by 48 percent over the past year.
Rising ocean levels threaten dozens of Africa’s rapidly expanding coastal metropolises, resulting in shrinking land area, coastal flooding, more powerful storm surges, and the need for better mitigation.
The deterioration of the security environment in the western Sahel is marked by an array of differing actors, drivers, and motivations, calling for contextualized responses.
Militant Islamist violence in Africa has risen continuously over the past decade, doubling in just the past 3 years.
Sahelian militant Islamist groups are threatening border areas of littoral states where grievances held by pastoralist communities may provide an entry point for extremist interests.
To be more meaningful to the lives of citizens and to better realize the vision of its founders, the African Union will need to empower its technical, legislative, and judicial institutions.
Extremist group violence against civilians is driven by context-specific factors—outgroup grievances, intimidation to control territory, and a response to heavy-handed security responses—that require enhanced community-level mitigation and military professionalism.