Domestic Politics

The new year began with a government reshuffle following the victory of the ruling party – the Union for the Republic (‘Union pour la république’, unir) – in the legislative elections on 20 December 2018. Although Prime Minister Komi Sélom Klassou had offered to resign because the victory of his party had been not as spectacular as expected, President Faure Gnassingbé reappointed him on 4 January in order to form the new cabinet. As announced on 25 January, Klassou made only slight modifications to his old team. Of the 23 ministers selected (four fewer than in the former government), 13 kept their portfolios, notably the politically most important, i.e. Yark Damehane (security), Robert Dussey (foreign affairs) and Gilbert Bawara (civil service). The most important portfolio of minister for defence remained again with President Gnassingbé himself to shield off any coup attempts.

On 23 January, the deputy of the unir, Yawa Tségan, said to be very close to the Gnassingbé clan, was elected president of the National Assembly. This was the first time in the history of the Togolese parliament that a woman had been elected as president of the parliament.

On 8 May, the unir majority in parliament voted on the controversial proposals of the ruling party for constitutional and institutional reforms which allowed a maximum of two consecutive five-year presidential terms. For President Gnassingbé, who came into power in 2005 and had been re-elected twice, in 2010 and 2015, in undemocratic elections, this meant that he would be allowed to stand for a fourth and fifth term up to 2030, because the law does not apply retroactively. The vote passed by 90 out of 91 members. That disposition could only be modified by a referendum, which in fact already opened up a loophole for the lifelong prolongation of Gnassingbé’s rule. Last but not least, the incumbent would be guaranteed immunity for life for acts performed during presidential terms.

Although the opposition coalition C14 (initially comprised of 14 opposition parties) had staged protests against various diplomatic channels (including ecowas, the eu, and the au) as well as big anti-government demonstrations in the past year, its resistance to this renewed usurpation of political power suffered from growing internal divisions. The biggest opposition party by far, the National Alliance for Change (anc, ‘Alliance Nationale pour le Changement’) of former opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre, parted ways with the C14 because of irreconcilable differences about tactics and direction, followed by the established car (‘Comité d’action pour le renouveau’) of former prime minister Yawovi Agboyibo and the new opposition party Pan-African National Party (pnp, ‘Parti National Panafricain’) of moderniser Tikpi Atchadam.

The long-expected first local elections for over 30 years (since 1987), rescheduled many times, finally took place on 30 June. The municipals were seen as an important step by all political parties, not least because the local elected officials would be entitled to elect two-thirds of the future senate. On 25 June, only a few days before the local elections, the law on decentralisation and local freedoms was amended. The new text established the limitation of the mandate of local elected officials to six years, renewable twice.

For the 1,527 seats in the 117 municipalities, finally, a total of 570 lists of political parties and independents and 114 municipalities were approved by the supreme court. Yet the pious wishes of the opposition, which had hoped for a fundamental change at least at the grass-roots, were again utterly dashed. unir gained 895 out of 1,490 (65%) municipal councillor seats according to the provisional results, as proclaimed by the National Election Commission (ceni) on 5 July. As expected, the victory of unir had been especially huge in northern localities, the traditional fief of the ruling party. The anc, the opposition coalition C14, the Union of Forces for Change (ufc), and ‘Nouvel Engagement Togolaise’ (net) had to be content with 134, 131, 44, and 33 municipal councillors respectively. The ceni reported deplorably low participation. Just 52.5% of the 3,466,524 voters enrolled went to the polls, the lowest participation rate since the presidential elections of 2005 that brought Faure Gnassingbé to power. According to the ceni, 2,435 national election observers and 37 international election observers followed the electoral process, which apparently passed off calmly without major incidence. However, the leader of C14, Brigitte Adjamagbo Johnson, contested the results because of multiple reports by the parties’ election observers of frauds such as ballot stuffing and conscience buying. The so-called Group of 5 (G5), composed of German, us, French, and eu embassy delegations, as well as the coordination of the un system in Togo, remained silent.

On 6 December, the government fixed 22 February 2020 as the date for the next presidential elections. This would be the fourth successive vote with the incumbent Faure Gnassingbé contesting. To participate, candidates would have to pay a deposit of CFAfr 20 m ($ 33,000) each. One week earlier, the president of the ceni, Tchambakou Ayassor, had fixed 1 December 2019 for the revision of the electoral list at the national level. The census of the 212,538 Togolese citizens in the diaspora entitled to vote was also postponed, from 5 to 29 November. This meant that for the first time in the country’s history the diaspora could vote. However, on 13 November the government decided that the Togolese diaspora, represented by the newly created Togolese High Council, organised by the government in Lomé, could only vote in six selected countries: France, United States, drc, Gabon, Nigeria, and Morocco. The numerous Togolese living in Germany, who had developed an especially critical stance against the ruling regime because most of them had been politically persecuted by the Gnassingbé dictatorship in the 1990s, were denied the right to vote.

In August, the parliament passed a law on national security which enabled the minister of territorial administration, and in some cases even local authorities, to order house arrests, identity controls, and interpellations of up to 24 hours. In addition, they had the right to evict foreign nationals, ban assemblies, suspend associations, and close establishments, including places of worship, hotels, and “other meeting places”. The law also allowed the minister of territorial administration to order the removal of or blocking of access to internet online content and to shut down online communications.

According to a report by Amnesty International on the human rights situation in Togo, to be presented at the un Human Rights Committee between 2 and 27 March 2020, the human rights situation in Togo had sharply deteriorated due to growing political and social tensions related to the prospect of the head of state running for a fourth term and the contested 2019 constitutional reforms. Moreover, laws had been revised to further curtail peaceful dissent. Thus, Lomé had failed to revise its criminal procedure code to build in fair trial standards and legal safeguards against torture and other ill-treatment. Furthermore, the harassment of journalists and media had continued. On 25 March, the High Authority for Audiovisual and Communication ‘(Haute Autorité de l’Audiovisuel et de la Communication’, haac) withdrew the licence of the ‘La Nouvelle’ newspaper because it had published “unverified information”, incited ethnic and religious hatred, and abused the privacy of citizens. On 13 April, the pnp organised nationwide protests to call for constitutional reforms. These protests were banned by the Ministry of Territorial Administration, except in Lomé, Afagnan, and Sokodé, on the grounds that they would “undermine public order”. Dozens of protesters and bystanders were injured. At least one man died during demonstrations in the northern town of Bafilo. At least 30 people were arrested during the 13 April protests, and 19 were sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment, with suspended sentences ranging from 12 to 24 months, for aggravated public disorder.

In April there were alarming reports, based on Burkinabe intelligence, about jihadists being hunted down in eastern Burkina Faso having taken refuge in the Northern Togo region, Benin, and Ghana. Most of the terrorists hunted down in April in the border region of Ghana, Togo, and Benin were returned to Burkina Faso. Jihadists also ambushed a vehicle crossing the border from Togo and murdered a Spanish Catholic missionary. In July, a new mixed contingent of 140 Togolese security forces was deployed to Mali as part of the un Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (minusma). Later, on 21 November, a large joint common security operation within the framework of the fight against terrorism and cross-border criminality, called ‘Koudanlgou iii’, led to the arrest of 427 suspects at the Togo–Ghana border in five regions of northern Ghana and the Savanes region of Togo.

Therefore, it was no surprise that the eiu 2019 Democracy Index still ranked Togo among ‘authoritarian’ regimes. In Freedom House’s ‘2019 Freedom in the World’ rating, Togo was ranked (for the year 2018) as ‘partly free’. In the un World Happiness Report of 2019, Togo continued to be ranked near the bottom (139th, for the period 2016–18) of the ladder of 156 countries evaluated, with neighbouring Ghana (98th) and Benin (102th) again ranked far higher.

Foreign Affairs

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which had been signed by Togo in March 2018 was ratified on 9 January 2019 and deposited on 2 April. It was a key element of the au’s ambitious ‘Agenda 2063’ and had been heralded as a milestone for regional integration and continental unity that would lead ultimately to a future African Economic Community (aec).

On 20 August, the Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari surprisingly closed Nigeria’s borders and suspended imports and exports across all of Nigeria’s land borders. His primary goal was to stop rampant informal trade and smuggling from Togo and Benin across the notoriously porous frontiers. Shortly before this, on 24 June, the Nigerian government had warned Ghana and Togo to stop attacking Nigerian traders in their countries, who had been maltreated because of accusations of unfair competition and law-breaking. The ‘partial closure’ (maritime export, e.g. of crude oil, was excluded) was considered an early warning sign against optimism concerning the AfCFTA. The closure, with no timeline for the reopening of the borders, not only had devastating effects on neighbouring Benin and Togo – key exporters of foodstuffs to Nigeria – but also pushed up prices for staples such as rice at markets around Nigeria. It was especially hard for Togo’s tomato producers and their Nigerian clients because the tomatoes rotted during transport at the frontier.

China, one of Togo’s major export partners, envisaged using the deep-water port of Lomé as a hub for China’s Belt and Road Initiative (bri) in West Africa. The traditionally close relations between China and Togo were reinforced when a Togolese group following up on the earlier Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (focac, 2018) visited Beijing on 26 June to track potential partnerships and investments. The headquarters of the China Road and Bridge Corporation were of special interest because that construction group had been keen to handle the transport corridor project falling under Togo’s National Development Plan. The project centres on the construction of a new heavy-haul railway line of about 760 km, in combination with upgrades to road and telecommunication infrastructure systems, extending from the port of Lomé to the northern border post of Cinkasse on the borders with Burkina Faso and Ghana. The only existing, but outdated, railway that stopped at Blitta, some 400 km south of Cinkasse, ceased operations in the mid-1990s. The new railway will complement the Tema–Ouagadougou mainline in neighbouring Ghana, for which it will constitute a modern and better-performing alternative, connecting sea ports of the Bight of Benin to the hinterland. Earlier, on 24 April, President Gnassingbé had inaugurated the new administrative services centre for the education, health, and agriculture ministries in the Lomé ii area, near the new presidential office, constructed by the Shanghai Construction Group for around $ 31 m.

From 13 to 14 June, the first Togo–eu Economic Forum, labelled ‘Le Rendez-vous des opportunite’, was held in Lomé, to mobilise higher levels of private investment in priority sectors in Togo. At the end of the year (3 December), the eu disbursed € 17 m for the current year within the framework of the eu grant of € 33 m for 2019–20 to support Togo’s National Development Plan (pnd).

The long-time special relations between France and Togo were reinforced by French military cooperation. Meanwhile, eight West African nations adopted a proposal to withdraw their currency reserves from the French central bank at a meeting of ecowas in November. The proposal was an outcome of the long-standing controversy over the ill-adapted and increasingly anachronistic cfa franc, harshly condemned as part of a neocolonial heritage by internationally renowned (former) African officials, including Togo’s Kako Nubukpo, an ex-officer of the Central Bank of West African States (bceao) and former Togolese minister. According to a survey by Afrobarometer on the cfa franc, published on 13 February, two out of three Togolese believed that the currency should be replaced; 66% responded that “the currency profits France more than members of the Franc zone such as Togo”. Already in July, the leaders of the sub-region had adopted a proposal to introduce a single currency, labelled the ‘Eco’, for the entire region by 2020. In the first phase, countries with their own currencies (Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone) would launch the Eco. In a second phase, the eight uemoa (West African Economic and Monetary Union) member countries that have the cfa franc in common (Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Niger, Benin, and Guinea-Bissau) would follow suit.

From 23 to 24 October, Faure Gnassingbé and his delegation attended the first ever Russia–Africa summit in Sochi, Russia, to attract investments for the pnd 2018–22.

Following Togo’s principle axis – its National Development Plan (2018–20, pnd) to make the nation a logistics hub on the Gulf of Guinea coast and a first-class business centre in West Africa – on 15 May Lomé confirmed the country’s adhesion to the international maritime transport convention, which it had signed in London on 9 April 1965. Because of the increasing threat of piracy, drug trafficking, and illegal fishery in the Gulf of Guinea, the eu promised to co-fund regional maritime security to the tune of € 155 m ($ 173 m) during the ecowas maritime stakeholders meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on 8 May. On 4 November, a large crude oil tanker, ‘Elka Aristotle’ (with a carrying capacity of 94,143 t dwt), flying the Greek flag, had been attacked about 18 km off the Togolese port of Lomé by armed pirates, who took four crew members hostage and injured one.

Socioeconomic Developments

According to the most recent countrywide business survey conducted by the national statistics institute (inseed) in January and March 2018, released on 24 June 2019, more than 85% of business in Togo operate in the informal sector. The Lomé region hosts by far the most businesses (63.4%), with the Plateau region following far behind (10.1%), followed in turn by Maritime (outside Grand Lomé) (8.3%), Kara (6.8%), Centrale (6%), and Savanes (5.4%). Moreover, illicit African gold exports came under the spotlight on 29 May. Although in Togo there is hardly any domestic gold production, it was listed as the seventh-largest source of gold exports to the United Arab Emirates (uae), which indicated significant illicit cross-border movement of gold – probably from Ghana, a key source of gold for the uae, including through illegal mining.

On 19 September, the government adopted the 2019 management finance bill, which brought the national budget to nearly $ 2.5 bn – an increase of 2.8%. This allowed the government to readjust expenditure forecasts according to the revenue initially expected. It was projected at cfafr 1,501.9 bn ($ 2.524 bn) against CFAfr 1,461 bn ($ 2.455 bn) in the initial finance law. Furthermore, according to the government, the implementation of the pnd required modifications to certain provisions of the general tax code. For the period 2018–20, the pnd was based on three axes with a total cost of $ 8.3 bn, 65% of which was expected to be mobilised from the private sector.

In its end-of-mission report, released on 19 December, the imf attested to the Togolese government’s firm economic recovery, with economic growth estimated to have accelerated from 4.9 % in 2018 to 5.3 % in 2019 and expected to reach 5.5 % in 2020. Furthermore, the imf confirmed a significant reduction of the budget deficit and public debt, which had increased from 43.2% of gdp at the end of 2011 to 77% of gdp at end of 2018, although it was still above the maximum public debt stock of 70% of gdp recommended by uemoa. However, fiscal deficit reduction is limited owing to the continuing tense socio-political situation, which also warrants higher security spending.

On 21 October, the minister of economy and finance, Sani Yaya, deplored the high-risk investment structures operating illegally in Togo and ordered them to immediately cease their activities. According to him, these fundraising structures irregularly collect funds from the public against equity or investment securities by promising returns of up to 360% of the initial stake and annual interest rates of around 90% on investments. Such activities cast a damning light on the 200 formal microfinance initiatives, with approximately 500 service points nationwide. These initiatives were assisted by the ‘Association Professionelle des Institutions de Microfinance du Togo’ (apim-Togo), which was created in 2004 to promote the development of the microfinance industry in Togo. In October, the government banned seven microfinance structures.

In August, the government expropriated more than 10,000 hectares in the Zio river flood valley (north of Lomé) in order to protect the population against the harmful effects of recurrent floods experienced in 2008, 2010, and 2012. The area had already been classified as a ‘non-building area’ by the Master Plan and Urban Planning document (pdu) of Lomé in 1981. But the population had continued to erect precarious residential structures there, liable to recurrent floods. The Rural Development Project of the Djagblé plain is being implemented on 340 hectares of the area.

The 2019 transhumance campaign review, presented at a conference from 16 to 17 December in Blitta, revealed that for the transhumance period 2019, there had been no deadly conflicts, unlike in 2018 and 2017, and only eight minor incidents. In total 10,370 heads of cattle had been registered for tax collection of CFAfr 56,548,000 ($ 95,720).

Child labour still exists in Togo. The un special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery revealed on 7 June in Dakar that an estimated 50,000 people were treated as slaves among the 7.4 m people of the country. Thereby, Togo ranks 45th out of 167 countries on the Modern Slavery Index. Many children had been forced into domestic servitude or hard labour, driven by poverty and a cultural tradition of ‘confiage’, which involves sending a child to a relative or friend to attend school in a larger town or city. This could place children at risk of exploitation by internal human trafficking. Parents are often complicit in child trafficking, and many traditional chiefs and leaders do not discourage the practice. On the contrary, boys, known as talibés, are sent to Quranic schools for education and subsequently forced by their teachers to beg in the streets.

Economic freedom, as measured by the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index 2019, improved slightly, increasing by 2.5 points to 50.3%. This was due to an improvement in fiscal health and rising scores for the tax burden and property rights. Yet Togo’s economy still ranks towards the bottom (158th place) of the 2019 index, and its overall score was below the regional and world averages. In short, Togo’s economic freedom was in keeping with the overall status of ‘mostly unfree’. However, according to the latest Doing Business indicators, Togo ranked among the best-reforming countries in the world, although it remained well below the level of its uemoa regional peers. This could constrain Togo’s ability to attract sufficient fdi, which might induce the government to resort again to debt-financed infrastructure development.