A two-day conference on the current democratic recession in West Africa closed with a number of recommendations, along with a proposal that ECOWAS works through two key civil society organizations to initiate a strategic response to the democratic rollback in the sub-region.
At the end of the conference on democratic recession and its impact on the media in West Africa, which was held in Ghana’s capital, Accra, experts, activists, civil society organizations and media practitioners from across the sub-region proposed that the ECOWAS Commission leverage on the Coalition of Civil Society Organizations established by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) to deploy a media response.
They also proposed that the regional body works through the West Africa Democracy Solidarity Network (WADEMOS), a network of activists in the subregion, to counter the current tide of coups and constitutional dictatorships with pro-democracy activism.
The conference was on the theme: The Media, Press Freedom and The Democratic Recession in West Africa. It was hosted by the MFWA and came off from 18 – 19 October, 2022.
Participants came from all 16 countries in West Africa including key ECOWAS representatives in the persons of Ambassador Baba Gana Wakil, ECOWAS Resident Representative to Ghana and Dr. Emmanuel Eyasan Okorodudu, Head of Democracy and Good Governance Unit.
Others were Prof. Kwame Karikari, media consultant and founder of the MFWA; Prof. H. Kwasi Prempeh, Executive Director of the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) and Ghana Director of projects for WADEMOS; and a host of others. Mr. Sulemana Braimah, Executive Director of the MFWA, was the host-in-chief.
The problem
West Africa, until recently, enjoyed a reputation as Africa’s bastion of democracy. From the early 90s, the region had increasingly seen democratization after Benin set the pace with elections in 1991 and Ghana followed in 1992. Indeed, by the early 2000s all countries in the subregion were democracies.
However, the 2020s have been shaping up to be the era of serious rollback on the democratic gains with the setbacks including the tendency for democratically elected presidents to tweak constitutions to change term limits in order to elongate their stay in office. The most significant of all the setbacks has been the recent wave of military coups d’état which have resulted in the overthrow of presidents and the heads of states of Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea.
Other significant indicators of democratic recession in the region include shrinking civic spaces in almost every country in the region. Also, attacks, arbitrary arrests and detention of journalists and activists have become rampant in countries in the sub-region. In the last two years alone, for example, data from MFWA’s monitoring show that there have been close to 200 incidents of media freedom and freedom of expression violations.
It was against this backdrop that the MFWA, in collaboration with WADEMOS, and with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), organized the two-day conference which hosted panel sessions on the current democratic recession and working groups to gauge the problem and spawn solutions.
Key learnings
The main diagnosis that participants gave for the current democratic recession is that many citizens of the countries in the subregion feel that the dividends from democracy, especially in terms of economic empowerment, have been unimpressive. It is this perception that made many youths in countries that have experienced coups applaud the military takeovers.
Then there is the problem of a generally weakened press environment as a result of economic hardships that journalists face from a widespread culture of poor remuneration and the tendency for politicians to establish media houses and thus skew professionalism.
Key recommendations
Participants were of the resolution that even with all of its shortcomings, democracy remains the best governance form to guarantee civic liberties, free civic space and freedom of the press in the subregion and therefore, the democratic rollback must be stemmed.
Also, participants agreed that the media and civil society remain crucial for countering the democratic recession and therefore, ECOWAS, must work closely with the media and CSOs to roll out a comprehensive response.
It was also recommended that the MFWA, which is an already subregional body engaged in professional media capacity-building, advocacy and activism, be positioned to serve as an interface between the media in the subregion and the ECOWAS.
The ECOWAS was urged to set up a Media Development Fund to improve the media’s capacity in the subregion. The media should build strategic collaborations with Civil Society while a program should be instituted by ECOWAS to organize capacity-building training for media practitioners annually.
Journalist associations in the various countries of the subregion were also advised to form cross-border alliances in order to fight attacks on journalists, journalism and press freedom in general with a more regional muscle.
The MFWA was asked to formally request an embedded staff at the ECOWAS Commission to facilitate media engagements at the regional level. This will serve as a formal link between the media in West Africa and ECOWAS. It was recommended that a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) should be signed to formalise this arrangement.