Souleymane Ouedraogo juggles two mobile phones that are constantly
ringing as he speeds on a moped across the capital of Burkina Faso to
urge young people to do something for the first time in their lives:
vote.
With three-quarters of the population under the age of 30 in
Africa’s fourth-biggest gold producer, the youth vote will probably
prove decisive in Nov. 29 presidential and legislative elections, Ouedraogo said in an interview. Music, megaphones, T-shirts and fiery Facebook messages are the weapons of choice of activists pushing for a high turnout.
“We’ve mobilized 450 volunteers to be at the polling
stations and make sure the elections will be transparent,”
said Ouedraogo, a coordinator for Balai Citoyen, or the Citizen’s Broom,
a grassroots movement that helped to organize mass protests culminating
in the ouster of President Blaise Compaore after 27 years in power in
October last year.
If the
elections are successful, they’ll mark the first democratic handover of
power in the history of Burkina Faso, where the revolt against Compaore
inspired protest movements from Burundi to the Democratic Republic of
Congo unhappy with rulers clinging to power. They are also key to
restoring investor confidence in the country, according to Cailin Birch,
a political analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
“This is
going to be the most truly open election in decades,” Birch said by
phone from London. “The next government is going to have to demonstrate
that it can re-establish stability and that Burkina Faso is a good place
to invest.”
The transitional government led by interim President Michel Kafando
cut spending as investment slowed following the ouster of Compaore.
Falling commodity prices
and the Ebola outbreak elsewhere in West Africa also hurt growth,
according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF forecasts the
economy will expand 5 percent this year.
Africa’s biggest cotton
grower, Burkina Faso had already experienced four coups before Compaore
seized power in the wake of the 1987 assassination of Thomas Sankara, an
army captain who gained Africa-wide fame for his revolutionary
leadership style.
Toward the
end of Compaore’s reign, few people bothered to vote and turnout
dropped to as low as 30 percent as stability failed to bring
development. Landlocked Burkina Faso ranks 181st out of 187 countries in
the United Nations Human Development Index.
Presidential Frontrunners
The
two front runners are ex-Prime Minister Roch Marc Christian Kabore and
Zephirin Diabre, a former regional chief of French nuclear company Areva
SA. Among the 12 other candidates are two women. As many as 99
political parties have put forward 7,000 candidates for the 127 seats in
the legislature.
“No representatives of the former ruling party
are allowed to stand, and all the votes will be counted before the
public,” Birch said.
An attempted coup in September almost
thwarted the election when members of the former presidential guard,
which the transitional government wanted to disband, arrested the
interim leadership before announcing a military takeover.
The
coup, three weeks before the vote was originally scheduled, failed when
protests erupted again and the national army decided not to back the
presidential guard, known by its French acronym RSP. Kafando was
reinstated on Sept. 23, and the RSP, known for its loyalty to Compaore,
was disbanded.
“We are not naive -- we know that the changes we
wish for won’t come overnight,” Serge Bambara, a rap musician known as
Smockey and a spokesman for Balai Citoyen, said in a TV interview this
month. “We just hope that the next president won’t practice the same
methods as the old regime. If he does, it’s possible that the population
won’t let him finish his mandate.”
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