Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
But there are five undoubted stars of the West African political scene. Morocco has
weathered the upheavals of the Arab Spring by inching towards greater freedoms while
remaining stable and relatively prosperous; Morocco is where West Africa's inhabitants
have the highest standard of living. Benin and Cape Verde rarely make the news, but con-
tinue to exhibit the stability, economic progress and good governance which are their
trademark. The same could be said for Senegal - the 2012 elections proved the strength of
the country's democratic institutions, although the subsequent dissolution of the parlia-
ment's upper house has caused disquiet in opposition circles.
And then there's Ghana, still the region's star performer with a series of successful elec-
tions under its belt at a time when its citizens are riding a wave of optimism thanks to the
discovery of offshore oil.
The Bad News
Of course, it's not all good news. In Nigeria, the ongoing breach between north and south
widens and narrows but never closes, while the far northeast, especially around
Maiduguri, is experiencing one of the most difficult times in living memory. And on the
economic front, Nigeria continues to disappoint. The country has received more than $325
billion in oil revenues over 30 years, yet the per capita income of its citizens is less than
US$2 per day; the average Nigerian now earns less than in 1960, before oil was dis-
covered. Even so, Nigeria's democracy is one of the most rambunctious on the continent
even as it continues to lumber forwards, and the country's literary and musical output con-
tinues to be prodigious.
For more than a decade, Mali was the poster child for West Africa's democratic trans-
ition. But in 2012 the army seized power, and a potent cocktail of Tuareg and Islamist
fighters seized vast swaths of the country's north; the Islamists won, and no one really dis-
putes that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb now pulls the strings across the Malian Saha-
ra. Elsewhere, Guinea-Bissau lurches from one crisis to the next, its political stability seri-
ously compromised by the country's role as a reported hub of the global trade in illicit
drugs. Cameroon, Burkina Faso and The Gambia are all stable but only because these are
places where one-man rule has crowded out most opposition.
According to the UN's annual Human Development Index, which is based on economic
and quality-of-life indicators, West Africa is the poorest region on earth. In the
187-country study, Niger was the second-worst place on earth in which to live. Also in the
bottom 20 are Liberia, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Côte
d'Ivoire and The Gambia. Rounding out the bottom five are Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau,
Niger and Mali. Not one West African country appears in the 100 most developed coun-
