Professor Ebenezer Obadare

Rather than a beacon of hope, Burkinabè tyrant Ibrahim Traoré is a pointer to everything that is wrong with the continent.

Ebenezer Obadare

Against all odds, ardor for a certain kind of authoritarianism is having a moment in Africa. Among a cross-section of its intelligentsia and general public, the idea of a lawgiver appears suddenly to be back in good odor.

The reason behind this infatuation is not difficult to divine. There is, for one thing, understandable frustration with the slow progress of democracy, and, for another, the weakness of the political leadership, even in those countries where civil rule may be said to have made the most advance. Whatever one’s feelings about the political leaders of the immediate post-independence years (think Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Kenneth Kaunda) there is no arguing that they filled the room—and the imagination—in a way that many of their contemporary peers (sic) simply cannot. An additional factor is amnesia, particularly regarding the ruinous legacy of the military in power, more on which later.

If, arguably unlike any other era in the region’s history, the historical moment favors the emergence of a charismatic lawgiver, no leader epitomizes or speaks to the zeitgeist more than Burkinabè strongman Ibrahim Traoré. Like his military brothers-in-arms across the Sahel and Central Africa, Traoré, who took power in September 2022, has never been shy about his intention to monopolize it. He has said openly—and, just to be sure, incorrectly—that “no country has ever developed under democracy,” the clearest indication, if any were needed, that he will not be getting involved in an electoral contest anytime soon. Accordingly, Traoré has moved to combine economic populism (both the nationalization of the country’s gold mines and reported distribution of free tractors to farmers have earned him plaudits) with political oppression, co-opting or, where that is not possible, cracking down on the opposition.

A person holds a sign with a picture of Captain Ibrahim Traoré while attending a rally by supporters of Burkina Faso’s junta to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup that brought Traoré to power in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on September 29, 2023. Yempabou Ouoba/REUTERS

As a strategy of consolidation, none of these is new—or, for experts, unexpected. As historian Samuel Fury Childs Daly reminds us in his timely and important new book, contrary to the settled impression that the military in power in Africa simply marches to its own beat, in reality, “military objectives blur into politics” in often unexpected ways, producing a militarism (his term for “rule by soldiers”) that is neither what the soldiers envisioned, nor what their adversaries feared. Soon enough, soldiers in power discover not only that there are numerous hitherto unknown gods to propitiate, but they also realize that “some of the strings of African politics” must be, willy nilly, pulled. In the end, what begins as an idealistic assault on power often ends up as a deep and entangling compromise with it as the rubber of glorious “revolutions” and “martial utopias” meets the road of uncharted political landscapes, wayward legislatures, and implacable civil societies. Having gained power through coercion, the military quickly learns that it takes more than that to keep it.

Traoré is not the only African military adventurer quickly learning this lesson and pulling all the stops in a bid to hold on to the reins. Having similarly mounted the saddle on the back of earnest promises to restore sanity to the political space, the regimes in Niger, Mali, Guinea, and Chad have resorted to the same combination of economic populism, constitutional manipulation, and aggressive social pacification. Gabon, where Brice Clothaire Oligui Nguema has just completed a stunning transition from soldier to civilian president in less than two years, is an instructive omen.

Yet, while the various juntas have all clearly taken a page from the same playbook, Traoré has been the one who has stood out. Described in quasi-mythical terms (the words “liberator,” “transformative,” “visionary,” “exceptional,” “courageous,” and “savior” recur in fawning references to him), he is arguably the only contemporary African leader about whom fondness is mixed with an unmistakable adulation. When he is not being idolized as the second coming of Thomas Sankara, the country’s one-time charismatic leader who was tragically assassinated by his friend Blaise Compaoré in October 1987, he is glorified as the “Chosen” herald of a vaguely defined Pan-African renaissance. A former Nigerian senator’s description of Traoré as “the spirit of a continent yearning to be free, dignified, and prosperous” may be misguided and overblown, but it is typical of the solicitude for Traoré, whose loyalists can be expected to verbally assault just about anyone—the author of this essay has the scars to prove it—who dares veer off script.

Traoré is not above fanning the embers of his own monumentalization. There is the absurd theater of his sartorial selection, meant to project strength and a defiant masculinity. Add to that the familiar choreography of alleged attempted assassinations and attempted coups d’état, like the latest one just a couple of weeks ago, that ultimately serve as a pretext for the arrest and detention of “enemies of state.”

And then there is Traoré’s robotic anti-Westernism, a pose seemingly dictated by a resolve to expose malign Euro-American forces ostensibly scheming against African progress. After AFRICOM Commander General Michael Langley, in his April 3 testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, correctly remarked that the coups across the Sahel owe collectively to “entrenched corruption, slow economic development, weak democratic institutions, and limited strategic patience” in the sub-region, Traoré loyalists were quick to interpret the general’s comments as a personal attack on their icon. General Langley was dragged over the coals as a shill of “imperialist forces” and reminded that “Burkina Faso is not a district of the United States.” South Africa’s opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which has long supported what it calls Traoré’s “resistance against neo-colonial pressures” condemned Langley’s statement as yet another proof of “the West’s continued interference in African nations’ affairs.”

To be sure, not all of the apparent support for Traoré is homegrown, never mind genuine. The role of the Kremlin in propping up Traoré as the arrowhead of a digital onslaught on liberal democracy and associated “Western values” in Africa has been well documented. Still, Moscow aside, there is enough evidence that for some Africans, Traoré fulfills a certain salvific yearning, one apparently unmet (unmeetable?) under the auspices of liberal democracy. Oddly enough, some of Traoré’s most fervent backers are Western-based actors whose passion for Africa tends to exceed actual knowledge of the region; whose concern for the welfare of Africa never extends as far as holding Africans and African leaders accountable for their actions; who automatically sign up for any cause so far as it bears an anti-Western label; and who irresponsibly preach dictatorship for Africa from the safety and comfort of Western capitals where their lives are secured by the same liberal regime they typically denounce as alien to Africa.

It is bad enough that, after the continent’s ghastly experience during the last wave of military coups, some Africans have decided to put their faith in yet another mildly cartoonish scoundrel. It is uniquely disappointing that, in an age in which the opportunity to express African agency has never been greater, many African intellectuals continue to harbor a conspiratorial view of international politics and diplomacy, one that Traoré, as untutored as they come, has stepped in to exploit.

No matter the justice of Africa’s presumed grievances against Western countries, sticking it to the West is not a development strategy. Nor is military rule, a barbarity that the rest of the developed world has definitively turned its back on, any more acceptable for being championed by yet another charlatan mouthing all the right ideological pieties and promising yet another soldier’s paradise.

*Professor Ebenezer Obadare is Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).This article was originally published by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy: The Cult of Traoré | Council on Foreign Relations

Nathan Schoonover and Giulio Bianco contributed to the research for this article.