Domestic Politics

Togo’s contested presidential elections dominated the domestic political scene in Togo right from the start of the year. The government had fixed the date for the elections only shortly before, on 6 December 2019, for 22 February 2020. Thus, it paved the way for a fourth, and perhaps eventually a fifth, five-year mandate for Faure Gnassingbé in 2020 and 2025 respectively. Altogether, ten candidates had been accepted for the presidential elections by the constitutional court, as released on 17 January – notably the incumbent Faure Gnassingbé; the leader of the biggest opposition party, Alliance nationale pour le changement (anc), Jean-Pierre Fabre; and Agbéyomé Kodjo from the Mouvement Patriotique pour la Démocratie et le Développement (mpdd). The latter had been prime minister already under the late Eyadéma Gnassingbé. Capitalising on the disunity of the opposition, Kodjo, backed by some of the parties of the opposition C14 coalition as well as by the retired archbishop of Lomé, Monseigneur Philippe Kpodzro, contested the leadership of the opposition by Jean-Pierre Fabre. Consequently, a new opposition political movement – Dynamique Mgr Kpodzro (dmk), an association of opposition parties and civil society organisations – was formed by supporters of Archbishop Kpodzro to back Kodjo for the presidentials on 22 February.

The electoral campaign started on 6 February, two weeks ahead of the polls, and ended 24 hours before the opening of the polling stations. About 10,000 troops were deployed to secure the elections, a prospect which, according to activists of the opposition, amounted to intimidation.

The election was monitored by 315 international election observers, mainly from the UN, the African Union (au), and ecowas. In addition, each candidate was allowed to send representatives to the almost 9,400 polling stations. But on 17 January, the government cancelled the election observer credentials of the largest independent civil society organisation, Concertation Nationale de la Société Civile, as well as those of the Catholic Church monitors. In addition, the National Democratic Institute (ndi) in Washington, DC, had its accreditation retired and one of its staff members expelled from Togo without warning. On election day, internet access was restricted and social networks, as well as critical media websites, were blocked.

The new electoral code of May 2019 and the endorsement of diaspora votes by parliament on 5 November 2019 made it possible for Togolese from the diaspora (estimated at 2 m people) to vote, for the first time in the country’s history. However, implementation provisions ensured that hardly any opposition voters had the opportunity to register to vote at any of the embassies. All told, just 348 citizens from the diaspora participated.

According to the National Election Commission (ceni), there were 3,738,786 registered voters, of whom 2,769,286 went to the polls, according to the preliminary results. The ceni counted 983,413 blank and invalid votes. According to the official final results confirmed on 3 March by the one-sided constitutional court, incumbent president Faure Gnassingbé won the elections with 70.78 % or 1,760,309 votes in the first round, as against 19.46 % or 483,926 votes for his closest contender, Agbéyomé Kodjo. Former opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre of the anc ended far behind in third place with 4.68 % or 116,336 votes. The suspiciously high voter turnout of 76.62%, 15 percentage points above the 2015 figure, suggested a growing interest among the general public in multi-party elections despite the biased organisation of the electoral process.

Kodjo, supported by the opposition, immediately declared the preliminary election results a forgery and maintained that he had gained the majority of votes. Kodjo’s appeal against the results to the constitutional court was dismissed. On the contrary, au and ecowas observers congratulated the Togolese people for the good conduct and peaceful course of the elections. In March, the immunity of Kodjo was lifted by the parliament because he still maintained his victory. Shortly afterwards, on 21 April, he was questioned by the police and arrested for failing to appear before the country’s intelligence and security police after proclaiming himself ‘elected president’ of Togo.

Togo’s Catholic bishops condemned the arrest of the opposition leader, a move that inspired continuing post-election tensions in the country. However, the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic in Togo in March 2020, with 3,604 confirmed cases and 68 deaths by 29 December, and the subsequent economic recession – mostly due to external shocks – may have mitigated the popular protest against the Gnassingbé regime.

Because dmk was perceived as a potential threat to the ruling powers, it was targeted by the security services. Some of its leading members, including the lawyer and human rights activist Brigitte Kafui Adjamagbo-Johnson, in 2010 the first woman to stand in a presidential election in Togo, and Gérard Yaovi Djossou, were imprisoned because of an alleged attack on the internal security of the state on 27 and 30 November. They were released provisionally on 17 December after almost three weeks of detention. Prior to this, on 21 April, around 16 dmk members who had protested against the arrest of the opposition politician Agbéyomé Kodjo on the same day were arrested and later found guilty of ‘rebellion’ and ‘complicity in the rebellion’ and sentenced to one year in prison, eight months of which were suspended. They were released on 25 August.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, various civic rights provisions were suspended. In an attempt to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus in Togo, all borders were closed and a lockdown applied to the cities of Lomé, Tsévié, Kpalimé, and Sokodé on 20 March for two weeks. On 16 March, the government announced a fund of 2 bn cfa (Communauté Financière Africaine) francs (CFAfr) to fight the pandemic.

On 28 September, a new prime minister, Victoire Tomegah Dogbé (aged 61), was nominated. She was the first woman to hold the office. An economist by training, Dogbé had been minister of grass-roots development, handicrafts, youth, and youth employment, as well as cabinet director in President Gnassingbé’s government since 2010. She appointed a new government with a record 30% of the 33 ministerial positions given to women, including Essozimna Marguerite Gnakade as defence minister – the first time a woman has held that portfolio.

On 19 October, the president reorganised his team of close collaborators. The ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ of a new guard of young and dynamic councillors, including a liaison officer of the army, was formed to assist the prime minister. It included the following new councillors: Sandra Ablamba Johnson, promoted to the rank of a minister as the new secretary-general of the Presidency; Kouessan Joseph Yovodévi, new director of communication at the presidency; Komlan Adjitowou, head of the military cabinet and formerly deputy chief of staff of the Togolese Armed Forces (fat), raised to the rank of general in 2018; and Djibril Mohaman Awalou, appointed national coordinator for the management of the response to Covid-19. The latter is a university professor and chief director of the army health service. The new ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ was meant to complement the president’s old guard of special advisors, such as the notorious French lawyer Charles Debbasch, Barry Moussa Barqué, and Koffi Sama. In October, Carlos Lopes, a Bissau-Guinean development economist and former executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, also joined Faure Gnassingbé’s crew of retired senior advisors of international standing, which included the likes of Tony Blair, Dominique Strauss-Khan, and Lionel Zinsou.

Simmering unrest within the security services alarmed the government as well as the general public. On 4 May, Colonel Bitala Madjoulba, commander of the 1st Rapid Intervention Battalion (bir), was murdered – shot in his office with his own revolver. The fact that this crime concerned a senior officer responsible for the protection of senior state officials turned this assassination into a state affair. Only one day after the assassination, Faure Gnassingbé nominated Lieutenant Colonel Atafai Tchangani to replace him. The latter had been head of a section at the Special Military School of Saint-Cyr, the foremost French military academy, and commander of the UN operations in Côte d’Ivoire, unoci Battalion. The Commission of Inquiry set up by the government in May, headed by the minister of security and civil protection, Brigadier General Yark Damehame, did not discover those responsible for the assassination.

On 3 October, President Gnassingbé made several crucial appointments by decree within the fat. Brigadier General Komlan Adjitowou was appointed chief of staff of the president of the republic. Colonel Kassawa Kolémaga, previously director of operations of the fat and former head of the National Intelligence Agency (anr), was promoted to chief of staff of the army. Colonel Tassounti Djato, until then commander of the Niamtougou Hunting Base (bcn, 350 personnel) in Niamtougou, the capital of Doufelgou Prefecture in Kara Region, the homeland and fief of the Gnassingbé family, was appointed chief of staff of the air force. Finally, at the end of December, General Dadja Maganawé became the new strongman of the Togolese army, nominated as chief of staff. It is noteworthy that while the general chief of staff of the fat is Brigadier General Félix Abalo Kadanga, the Ministry of Defence remains in the hands of Faure Gnassingbé, a measure aimed at forestalling coup attempts.

The continuing violation of human rights in Togo remained a special concern of the international community. According to a report by Amnesty International, presented at the unhcr (from 2 to 27 March), the human rights situation in Togo sharply deteriorated due to growing political and social tensions related to the prospects of the head of state running for fourth and fifth terms and the contested 2019 constitutional reforms. Furthermore, Togo still ranked among the most corrupt states worldwide (ranked 130th of 180 countries). Finally, the high level of illicit financial flows (iff), which strongly correlates with money laundering, attracted the concern of the international donor community. These iffs came mainly from three sources: commercial tax evasion, trafficking of bills in international trade, and abusive transfer prices set by transnational corporations that shift profits out of the countries where they operate and into tax havens, thus selling themselves goods and services at artificially high prices. Examples of other iffs are criminal activities such as drug dealing, illegal transactions on weapons, smuggling, active corruption, and the collusion of corrupt civil servants. iffs represented almost 500% of Togo’s tax revenues, ranking Togo second in the world.

Increasing encroachment on internet media freedoms took various forms, ranging from subtly increasing regulatory powers over social media to country-wide internet shutdowns. In June, the Haute Autorité de l’Audiovisuel et de la Communication (haac) suspended the bi-monthly ‘Panorama’ for violating the professional rules of journalism and commenting unfavourably on the head of state in May. On 25 March, the haac withdrew the licence of the newspaper ‘La Nouvelle’ for publishing ‘unverified information’ and incitement of ethnic and religious hatred. On 4 November, the editor of the opposition journal ‘L’Alternative’, Ferdinand Ayité, as well as the journal itself were condemned and each fined CFAfr 2 m for defamation in the ‘Pétrolegate-affaire’, because Ayité had accused the head of the committee responsible for monitoring petroleum product price fluctuations, Fabrice Adjakly, of being responsible for the diversion of CFAfr 500 bn. On 29 December, Carlos Kétohou from the ‘L’Indépendant Express’ was arrested. Also, government interference with internet and mobile phone companies was of special concern in the context of participatory development approaches espoused by international donor agencies, given the growing reliance on digital information and communication technologies.

Togo’s overall status in Freedom House’s 2020 Freedom in the World rating remained ‘partly free’ as in the previous two years. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2019 (the most recent available), Togo was upgraded from 130th to 126th out of 167 countries. As in the previous year, the eiu classified Togo as an ‘authoritarian regime’.

Foreign Affairs

On 17 January the five heads of state of Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda, Senegal, The Gambia, and Togo met in Lomé for a summit against drug trafficking. Trafficking in fake drugs is said to kill about 900,000 Africans every year, among them 120,000 children under five. Thus, more Africans die from fake drugs than of malaria.

On 26 February, the US government released a remarkably frank criticism of the conduct of the 2020 presidential elections in Togo. In particular, it disapproved of the meagre efforts of independent election observation, notably the decision of the ceni to revoke the accreditation of the ndi in Washington, DC, and the expulsion of its observers three days before the election.

Because of the economic burden of the Covid-19 pandemic, the heads of state of the waemu/uemoa declared a temporary suspension of the waemu growth and stability pact. As a result, member countries were allowed to raise their overall fiscal deficit temporarily.

On 24 April, the government announced the completion of the application process for the country’s membership of the African Trade Insurance Agency (ati), thus becoming the eighth African sovereign shareholder of currently 18 member countries. The move had been backed by the eib and reflects a trend that has seen a record number of West African countries join Africa’s multilateral guarantee agency – including Ghana, Niger, and Nigeria, all of which have completed the process for membership in the last nine months. This trend is expected to continue as countries seek support to ensure investment and trade flows on the continent to manage the economic fallout from the coronavirus.

The intimidation of the opposition continued on all fronts and by all means. According to a survey conducted by ‘Le Monde’ (Paris) and the ‘Guardian’ (London), published on 3 August, the government in Lomé had spied on members of the opposition dmk, using the highly sophisticated Israeli Pegasus software to monitor mobile phone and internet activity.

In advance of the ecowas announcement on 9 September of a gradual withdrawal of its intervention force in Guinea-Bissau, a first batch consisting of 130 men – mainly from the Togolese Special Forces – left Bissau on August 27.

On 4 November, Lomé prepared to ratify a convention with neighbouring Benin on the creation of the Mono Basin Authority (abm), regulating the status of the Mono River bordering the two countries. On 1 December, the national assembly adopted a bill authorising the Togolese state to ratify the agreement establishing the African Intellectual Property Organization (oapi), headquartered in Yaoundé, which embraced 17 mostly francophone African states. The agreement, adopted in December 2015 in Bamako, would allow Togo to better protect intellectual property rights – the inventions and creations of its citizens – and to fight effectively against counterfeiting.

The EU and its member states, notably France and Germany, continued to aid Togo. The EU announced on 15 January its budget support of more than CFAfr 10.5 bn (€ 16 m) for the ‘consolidation of the State, phase 3 (ccet 3)’. Germany’s KfW provided € 5 m on 18 May to reinforce the decentralisation process.

In August, France extended its support to Togo and Ghana for anti-jihadist aerial surveillance. Moreover, on 16 November, Paris supported the Togolese navy in combating piracy in the Gulf of Guinea with Sillinger sea hunters of the same type already intended for the Libyan coastguard.

In November, Lomé was involved in mediation efforts in the Malian crisis precipitated by the August coup staged by the Malian Armed Forces, which led to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta being forced to resign and his government being dissolved. Lomé’s partisan mediation role was aimed at ‘saving’ the junta. On 13 November, the transitional president in Bamako, Bah N’Daw, visited Lomé for negotiations. But behind the scenes, contacts had already been made in the greatest secrecy the day after the putsch, which included an exchange of visits in private jets and clandestine meetings.

In November 2019, the Nigerian multinational Dangote Industries and the Togolese government had agreed to develop and transform the Togolese phosphate and cement industry. In January 2020, the first contract for a 2.5 m tpa (tons per annum) cement grinding plant with vertical roller mill (vrm) crushers from the Cimenterie de Côte Ouest-Africaine (CimCo) was awarded to the Intercem Group (Cimfaso & Cimasso in Burkina Faso and CimIvoire in Côte d’Ivoire) by the CimMetal Group. The start of production was scheduled for the first quarter of 2021. The new facility, named Cimco sa, will be strategically situated at the port of Lomé and is destined to become the country’s largest grinding plant by capacity. HeidelbergCement announced an expansion of its Togolese subsidiary, Cimtogo, spending more than $ 30 m in the process, which will create 30% more direct jobs in addition to the nearly 4,000 direct and indirect jobs already provided in Togo. Heidelberg already has a grinding station in Kara and an integrated clinker plant in Tabligbo.

Socioeconomic Development

In April, the World Bank and the imf provided considerable additional support for Togo to counteract the economic impact of the Covid-19 crisis. On 3 April, the imf authorised an immediate disbursement of $ 131.1 m to Togo in line with the completion of the sixth and final review of the country’s economic performance under the programme supported by the ecf agreement. The disbursement was four times greater than what was initially planned ($ 35 m), due to the human and economic implications of Covid-19.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the prospects for Togo’s economy had been encouraging, with growth expected to reach 5.3% in 2020 and 5.5% in 2021, on the back of good performance in agriculture and sound monetary management. However, under the Covid-19 shock, Togo was likely to record a loss of growth of between 4.6% and 6.8 % in 2020. In the worst-case scenario, the fiscal deficit, initially forecast at 1.5% of gdp in 2020, would rise to 6.4% due to the increase in health expenditure and the fall in tax revenues caused by the fall in the general level of economic activity. The current account deficit was expected to follow a similar trajectory. Forecast at 3.2% of gdp, it was projected to worsen to 5.7% or possibly 7% of gdp in 2020 under the effect of lower exports and declining migrant remittances and fdi in the main economic sectors.

On 18 December, the parliament voted on the financial law for 2021. According to the provisions, the 2021 budget will be balanced in allocations with expenses at CFAfr 1,521.6 bn, or $ 2.84 bn. The budget deficit of CFAfr 280.8 bn represents 6.1% of gdp and would be ‘entirely financed by the surplus balance of treasury operations’, according to finance minister Sani Yaya. The budget allocated CFAfr 445.1 bn ($ 831.83 m) to the social sectors, up 10.8%. Agriculture will benefit from CFAfr 65.7 bn, while CFAfr 77.9 bn will be reserved for the health sector, i.e. 10%. Education was allocated CFAfr 195.5 bn, or 25.1% of the 2021 budget.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a discernible effect on the level of social exclusion too, notably of people employed in the informal sector. Roughly 62% of jobs were at risk, 49% in the services sector and 13% in the industrial sector. To counteract the negative effects on the poor and vulnerable, the African Financer of Micro-Projects (Financière Africaine de Micro-Projets, finam), the first public limited company for microfinance, embarked on the digitalisation of its services by creating the application Finam Mobile in response to the Covid crisis. The app allows people to manage their account at home, including making deposits and withdrawals, starting on 11 September. It launched the first iteration of its ‘1,000 micro-projects’ campaign to combat youth unemployment. The target groups can benefit without prior deposits: with simple guarantees from members of finam, they can obtain loans of up to CFAfr 600,000 for the realisation of their micro-projects.

In addition, through its National Agency of Volunteers in Togo (Agence Nationale de Volontariat au Togo, anvt) the government tried to counteract un- and under-employment, though with limited success. Since 2011, more than 43,000 candidates have registered. Overall, 8,989 people – 4,610 women and 4,348 men, including 31 disabled people – were targeted in 2020.

The coronavirus crisis accelerated the establishment of a universal solidarity income scheme by the National Solidarity and Economic Fund in April called ‘Novissi’ (meaning ‘brotherhood’ and ‘living together’ in the Ewe language). The stipends were paid twice a month and were mainly intended for people living on daily earnings, without social security and affected by the decline in activity. Novissi was a 100% digital scheme that reached nearly 570,000 of the affected poor between 8 April and 6 June 2020, the date of the lifting of curfews in Grand Lomé and the prefecture of Tchaoudjo in Centrale Region. The programme was extended to the rural canton of Soudou in Kara Region in north-eastern Togo when the circulation of the coronavirus forced a drastic reduction in activities. Those entitled were to receive directly, through mobile enrolment, a state grant of at least 30% of the minimum wage. Based on programme data, 65% of the beneficiaries were women. The cash transfer programme was expected to last three months at a cost of CFAfr 36 bn ($ 61 m; 1.1% of gdp). The Novissi scheme was revised in late June, with eligibility limited to workers in specific districts recording a high Covid-19 contagion rate. In total so far, 1.4 m individuals have registered and close to 600,000 have received a Novissi payment, at a total cost of CFAfr 11.4 bn ($ 19 m; 0.3% of gdp).

Cotton production for the 2019/20 season gave a poor yield of 116,000 tons, against the forecast of 150,000 tons, according to the New Cotton Company of Togo (nsct).

In February, ecowas, including Togo, agreed to adopt a regional standard on imported gasoline and diesel fuels of 50 parts per million (ppm) starting in January 2021, with local refineries given until January 2025 to comply. In December 2016, Togo and four neighbouring countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire) had already agreed in principle to ban imports of ‘dirty’ fuels from Europe. The average ‘unofficial’ imported diesel tested was 152 higher in sulphur than the level of EU sulphur standards, while for gasoline the levels were 40 times higher than the standard. The who ranked these as among the top global health risks associated with heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory problems.

Togo continued to be a ‘safe’ haven for money laundering. On 20 September, cenozo, an investigative reporting unit in West Africa revealed suspicious transactions aimed at financing terrorist networks in the frontier zone in the north of Togo. Cinkassé, Dapaong, and other localities bordering Burkina Faso were classified as a ‘red zone’ where the presence of jihadists had been noticed by the population.