Frank Agyekum: Coup d’états exposing frailties of regional bodies in Africa

The Coup d’état in Burkina Faso over the weekend has thrown the spotlight once again on the effectiveness of regional bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU).

Coming soon on the heels of the attempted coup in Niger about two years, Mali in 2021, Monday’s putsch in Ghana’s immediate northern neighbour, has left watchers of democratic governance in the sub-region worried.

The rapidity of these take-overs has left many to wonder if this is the beginning of the end of democratic governance, which many hoped, was taking root in the sub-region. Fears of a return to the late ‘60s through early ‘70’s when one government after the other, in the region, fell to the ‘men in boots’ very easily plays on people’s minds.

More worrying in all these is that although the flashlights had been going on for quite some time, ECOWAS nor the AU could do little to prevent them from happening, putting their effectiveness into question.

But ECOWAS or the AU, as currently structured, can do little to forestall coup d’états from happening.

ECOWAS’ Early Warning and Response Network (ECOWERN) with its four zonal offices across the sub-region, where able to pick up signals of potential danger in member-countries, are unable to intervene in any shape or form because they have no such mandate nor properly equipped to do so.

They only report to leaders of the Commission who are unable to intervene militarily because they do not have any battalion to commandeer.

The options open to the regional body, therefore, is the imposition of economic or political sanctions, which they have rapidly applied, but have proved to be ineffective, in many ways.

The economic and political dynamics of the region shows that many of the countries look more to their former colonial masters in Europe than to fellow-African states.

This is exemplified in the reality that very little trade goes on among African countries, 15%, as compared to trading with Europe, the United States, China and Asia as a whole.

Similarities in ecology, agricultural and economic structures of the sub-region, means countries can survive on their own for a long time without depending on their neighbours, once they can trade with countries outside Africa.

Political sanctions, by way of expelling such countries from ECOWAS or AU, could have some telling effect, but this has proved not to be enough as shown by the contempt of the junta leaders of Mali and Guinea in flouting ultimatums by the regional grouping.

Bereft of a truly regional hegemon to whip errant leaders into place, the most viable option left for ECOWAS or the AU is to establish a standby military force as in the UN Peacekeeping Forces that could be quickly deployed in times of military take-overs to help to restore normalcy.

The success of the ECOWAS Ceasefire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guineas Bissau in the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s, shows this to be the panacea to prevent West Africa from re-clothing itself as a region of ‘political instability.

Leaders in the region must be prepared to give up a bit of their sovereignty in favour of this regional force for the sake of deepening democracy and engendering the progress we so much crave.

Frank Agyekum

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