Until recently, West Africa was regarded as a bastion of democracy in Africa. Starting from 1991 when Benin set the pace by electing its government through the ballot box, all 16 countries in the subregion were to various degrees, functioning democracies by 2015. However, from the 2020s, democratic challenges that countries in the subregion experienced degenerated, shaping the 2020s into the era of serious democratic recession for the region. The rollback has been characterised by incumbency adventurism in which sitting presidents tweak laws to prolong their stay in power beyond constitutional term limits, clampdown on dissenting voices resulting in shrink civic spaces and recorded cases of coup d’états and military takeovers.
This policy brief discusses The Media, Press Freedom and the Democratic Recession in West Africa: Trends, Challenges and Recommendations. Kindly click here to read.
