Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Elections in Cameroon and Ivory Coasts saw victories for their
Speaker 2: long serving leaders.
Speaker 3: Mister Alison Watara has been provisionally declared elected in the
Speaker 3: first round with eighty nine point seven seven percent of
Speaker 3: the votes cast.
Speaker 2: But with opposition candidates barred from running. There's a warning
Speaker 2: about the rise of democratic dictators. The population knows very
Speaker 2: well that the Constitutional Council and the Electoral Commission are
Speaker 2: just an extension of the regime. On today's podcast, we're
Speaker 2: discussing the wave of no contest elections across Africa, why
Speaker 2: political analysts are concerned, and which countries are bucking the trend.
Speaker 2: I'm Jennifer Zaba Saja and this is the Next to
Speaker 2: Africa podcast, bringing you one story each week from the
Speaker 2: continent driving the future of global growth with the context
Speaker 2: only Bloomberg can provide. Joining me this week is Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Senior reporter Yinka Ibukun, who's written one of this week's
Speaker 2: Next Africa newsletters on this very subject.
Speaker 3: Yinka, thanks so much for being with us this week.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me ched.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's always great to speak with you and
Speaker 2: catch up with you, there's been quite an activity, at
Speaker 2: least on the electoral front across the continent, and we're
Speaker 2: going to try to unpack it in the next few minutes.
Speaker 2: But maybe we'd just start with Cameroon because many people
Speaker 2: are looking at the age of Paulbia, ninety two years old.
Speaker 2: He won an eighth term and he's the world's oldest president.
Speaker 2: I mean, break this down for us. What would you
Speaker 2: say is the significance of this election?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean this election has put cameboon at
Speaker 1: Adges Crossroad. I would say that the attentions kicked off
Speaker 1: when the main opposition leader was barred from running back
Speaker 1: in July, and that basically meant that the president would
Speaker 1: be facing a weekend opposition. But it was the candidacy
Speaker 1: of Ista Chiroma Bakari, who's a man who served in
Speaker 1: the Bia administration for about two decades, that ended up
Speaker 1: being the real game changer in this election because young
Speaker 1: people have been hungry for change in Cameroon. They've never
Speaker 1: known any leader other than Bia, and so they rallied
Speaker 1: around Chiroma and came out and masked to vote for him,
Speaker 1: to the point where Chiroma actually declared himself winner of
Speaker 1: the vote by his own party tally FO. Days later,
Speaker 1: the official results said that it was President Bia and
Speaker 1: not Chiroma, who won the election with four percent of
Speaker 1: the vote, and so that decisive win has fit claims
Speaker 1: that there was rigging, especially because the are barely even
Speaker 1: campaign and as you said, he's ninety two years old,
Speaker 1: the oldest president in the world. He's been in power
Speaker 1: in Cameroon for more than forty years, and so.
Speaker 3: Here you are, he hardly.
Speaker 1: Shows up at the campaign and still walks away with
Speaker 1: a comfortable win in a country that's basically facing a
Speaker 1: successionist war, where his administration has chased lots of corruption scandals,
Speaker 1: and also where there's really high youth unemployment. And so
Speaker 1: as we speak, there's actually sporadic protests erupting across Cameroon
Speaker 1: to challenge the outcome of the vote.
Speaker 2: Wow, and a country with the median age of eighteen
Speaker 2: years old, right having, as you mentioned, probably haven't known
Speaker 2: any other leader, most of them, Yinka. Let's also move
Speaker 2: on to the Ivory Coast. In an earlier podcast, we
Speaker 2: talked about some of the challenges that the country was
Speaker 2: facing leading up to October's vote. Now Watara has been
Speaker 2: re elected. What do you make of the response, and
Speaker 2: especially from the international community because he is well known
Speaker 2: and to a certain extent well regarded internationally.
Speaker 1: So Ivory Coasts also just concluded its vote and Wataha
Speaker 1: won with ninety percent of the vote after key challenges
Speaker 1: were excluded. So with that result, you know, there's also
Speaker 1: eyebrows being raised. It was hardly an open vote, I
Speaker 1: think that's fair to say, but the international community has
Speaker 1: largely looked away, and there's probably two reasons why that is. First,
Speaker 1: Wataha has delivered strong economic growth for Courdivois, which is
Speaker 1: Africa's biggest coco producer, and he's created an investor friendly
Speaker 1: environment there. But perhaps more importantly, he's seen as a reliable,
Speaker 1: secure ally in a region that's been threatened by jihadists.
Speaker 1: And so for Western government it's likely a situation where
Speaker 1: they're balancing their priorities and choosing probably stability of more
Speaker 1: democratic concerns. Though it's interesting to note that it's actually
Speaker 1: not been like the regular congratulatory messages, so they've not
Speaker 1: criticized the vote, but they's not congratulated Wataha either.
Speaker 3: And let's go from the West to the east. Yinka.
Speaker 2: Because Tanzania just went to the polls on Wednesday where
Speaker 2: another opposition figure was barred from running.
Speaker 3: What's the state of play there.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, it's more of the same Jenet bite. It's becoming
Speaker 1: a pattern. This a situation where the opposition is barred
Speaker 1: and then a clear path is created for the incumbent
Speaker 1: to stay in power. And so what you saw in
Speaker 1: Cameroon in Ivory coast's basically also happening in different ways
Speaker 1: to a different degree, but it's happening all the same
Speaker 1: in Tanzania. And so in the case of President Samya
Speaker 1: Suluhu Hassan, it's two main key opponents that were barred
Speaker 1: from running, including one that's facing trees and charges. And
Speaker 1: so yes, even though the vote has happened, there was
Speaker 1: an election, balance boxes were put out. The outcome is
Speaker 1: pretty predictable there also.
Speaker 3: And there's quite a crackdown on what's happening on the ground.
Speaker 1: There's a security forces cracked out, but also interestingly there's
Speaker 1: been a crackdown on the internet. And I think that
Speaker 1: what you see cutting across Tanzania, Ivory Coast and Cameroon
Speaker 1: and really across Africa is that you have a really
Speaker 1: young population, and they're challenging the status quo in ways
Speaker 1: that you know, these traditional systems aren't used to. There's
Speaker 1: no central leader. They are able to mobilize each other
Speaker 1: through social media, and that's making governments wary and so basically,
Speaker 1: in the case of Tanzania, they literally shut off the Internet.
Speaker 2: Wow, which, as we've seen, it's a powerful tool for
Speaker 2: a number of organizers INCA. For this piece, I understand
Speaker 2: you spoke to a political scientist who gave you his
Speaker 2: own concerns about these no contest elections.
Speaker 3: What did he say to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I did this piece with my colleague at
Speaker 1: Cordonto who went to the University of Ghana and spoke
Speaker 1: to a lecturer there, Kwame asa Asante, and so he
Speaker 1: told him that, you know, this trend of blocking the
Speaker 1: opposition to allow the comments to stain power is given
Speaker 1: rise to democratic dictators where you kind of keep the
Speaker 1: appearance of the democracy. You have the ballot boxes, you
Speaker 1: have the constitutional courts, all the stuff that a democracy
Speaker 1: should have, but actually there's no real choice. Citizens don't
Speaker 1: get to pick who's going to rule over them, and
Speaker 1: so that authoritarian drift is actually prompting military take overies
Speaker 1: in many places, it's tempting the military to basically jump
Speaker 1: in and say, hey, we're here and we can restore order.
Speaker 1: The democracy's flawed, this corruption, and we can do better
Speaker 1: than this so called democratic leaders. And so we've seen
Speaker 1: that play out in the Sahel, especially where we'll actually
Speaker 1: jumulated in the streets when soldiers took over. And so
Speaker 1: that's what he's concerned about, that we're creating the conditions
Speaker 1: for military takeovers to happen more broadly.
Speaker 2: And we also saw that from Madagascar just a few
Speaker 2: days ago.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 3: Binka hold that thought.
Speaker 2: When we come back from the break, well, look at
Speaker 2: where in Africa is going against this trend and potentially
Speaker 2: what we might be able to learn from some of those.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Welcome back. Today.
Speaker 2: We're looking at the recent run of so called no
Speaker 2: contest elections in Africa and what they say about the
Speaker 2: state of democracy on the continent. Senior reporter Yinka Ibukun
Speaker 2: is still with me. Yinka, you use the example of
Speaker 2: Senegal in your piece. For those who may not remember
Speaker 2: last year, how did that unfold?
Speaker 1: So? I mean Senego had its election last year and
Speaker 1: Senegal is basically a bright light of hope in the
Speaker 1: context that we find ourselves in today. Because in Senegal,
Speaker 1: what happened was that President Makishal at the time was
Speaker 1: basically looking like he was going to go for a
Speaker 1: third term, which would have been at least by the text,
Speaker 1: un constitutional, and so there were huge protests that broke
Speaker 1: out across Senecal to prevent him from doing so, and
Speaker 1: he eventually announced that he had no intention of running
Speaker 1: at that term, and so it was really the people
Speaker 1: who forced a president to basically honor the constitution there.
Speaker 1: It's a really young country. We've said this for all
Speaker 1: the countries we've mentioned so far, And what happened after
Speaker 1: that was that it was really a generational shift. The
Speaker 1: president that they ended up electing was forty four years
Speaker 1: old at the time, the youngest president I think in
Speaker 1: Africa elected, and so it was a generational shift that
Speaker 1: happened there and a response to young people's demands.
Speaker 2: Are we seeing similar instances of success elsewhere?
Speaker 1: I mean, what we're seeing is youth pushed back. People
Speaker 1: are organizing through social medias and other means, and their
Speaker 1: demand better and in some cases it's toupled governments in Nepal,
Speaker 1: in Bangladesh. In other cases, it's just made sure that
Speaker 1: people's voices have been heard in Kenya, in Mozambique, in Morocco,
Speaker 1: and so you're seeing young people more willing to mobilize
Speaker 1: these countries and majority young people, and they are increasingly
Speaker 1: have little to lose because often the growth that you're
Speaker 1: seeing in these countries is not inclusive. It's not creating
Speaker 1: enough jobs for them. And in the case of Madagascar,
Speaker 1: for instance, they were asking for really basic things like
Speaker 1: it started off with them just asking for water and electricity,
Speaker 1: you know, and it ended up toppling a government and
Speaker 1: bringing in a military leadership. So it's really about young
Speaker 1: people mobilizing getting better at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it goes to show really what you know,
Speaker 2: that these leaders can't ignore this. You know, you mentioned
Speaker 2: Kenya and we saw changes after a lot of those
Speaker 2: protests that unfortunately were deadly, but you know, the president
Speaker 2: actually had to take notice of some of the changes
Speaker 2: that they were calling for, which I think was really
Speaker 2: notable to mention.
Speaker 3: Yinka before we let you go.
Speaker 2: It's also worth mentioning because you point out in your
Speaker 2: piece it's not all necessarily doom and gloom when it
Speaker 2: comes to transitions of power. There was Ghana, Malawi and
Speaker 2: the Seychelles this year. What are you paying attention to
Speaker 2: just to get a sense of maybe where things are
Speaker 2: headed next.
Speaker 1: I mean, you mentioned deadly protests and that's really sad
Speaker 1: where people have to lose their lives to make a point,
Speaker 1: you know, to have their voices heard. And so I'm
Speaker 1: actually looking at these gen z movements of young people mobilizing,
Speaker 1: but more so beyond that mobilization, like if it's able
Speaker 1: to bring about real change. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: much change it can actually bring when you still have constitutions,
Speaker 1: when the courts uh compromised or the electrical commissions aren't
Speaker 1: truly independent. You don't want to just have people put
Speaker 1: their bodies on the line but then have your real change.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking for real change and what that would
Speaker 1: look like coast dis genity movement in each of these
Speaker 1: countries and beyond.
Speaker 2: Yinka, thank you so much for joining us as always
Speaker 2: and for all of your reporting, and you can read
Speaker 2: Yinka's reporting on Bloomberg platforms now, including our Next Africa newsletter.
Speaker 2: Here's some of the other stories from the region we've
Speaker 2: been following this week. South African President Zero Ramopouza said
Speaker 2: negotiations for a trade deal with the US were ongoing
Speaker 2: and voiced optimism for an agreement. Ramaposa stated that negotiations
Speaker 2: with the US were now quote based on text, which
Speaker 2: he characterized as progress towards getting an agreement nailed down.
Speaker 2: And Namibia repaid it's seven hundred and fifty million dollar eurobond,
Speaker 2: the largest single day debt maturity in the Southwest African
Speaker 2: nation's history. According to the Finance minister, the redemption seeks
Speaker 2: to enhance the country's credit worthiness and positions it favorably
Speaker 2: for potential future engagements in the global capital markets if
Speaker 2: circumstances warrant, and you can find these stories on Bloomberg platforms,
Speaker 2: including the Next Africa Newsletter. Will put a link to
Speaker 2: that in the show notes. This program was produced by
Speaker 2: Adrian Bradley and tiwa Adebayo. Don't forget to follow and
Speaker 2: review this show wherever you usually get your podcasts, But
Speaker 2: for now, I'm Jennifer Zabasadra.
Speaker 3: Thanks as always for listening.