Ibrahim Traore is the latest sensation on the African continent. For many young- and not so young- people on social media, he has become the figurehead of a new pan Africanism that is suspicious to Western interest and interventions on the continent and specifically opposed to the French neocolonial hold on large swathes of African countries- with little to show in terms of development and progress after many decades. They are also sceptical about democracy and its lofty promises, against the reality of continued under-development and impoverishment of the African continent.
Captain Ibrahim Traoré, a 34-year-old artillery officer in Burkina Faso’s counterterrorism units, seized power on September 30, 2022, in a coup that ousted interim leader Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, whom he had helped install months earlier citing failures against jihadist insurgents. His takeover unfolded amid a worsening Islamist insurgency across the Sahel, with violent fatalities more than doubling after the coup. Traoré’s pledges to restore security, leverage mineral wealth and reject Western influence- and his pan-African overtures- have resonated on social media, casting him as a revolutionary icon among disenchanted youth across Africa and the diaspora.
At the time of his September 2022 takeover, Traoré publicly pledged to hand power back to civilians within two years—negotiating to respect his predecessor’s agreement with ECOWAS to restore democratic rule by late 2024. Indeed, he set July 2024 as the target for presidential elections. In early 2023 he reiterated a 21-month deadline for civilian rule, tying it to security gains. By September 2023, however, Traoré declared that elections were “not a priority” until jihadist-held areas were retaken to ensure universal suffrage. Following national "consultations" in May 2024, he extended the transition by five more years. This move effectively pushed elections as far out as 2029, while ambiguously allowing for polls “sooner if security conditions permit” and reserving the right to run himself.
The emergence of Traoré came against the backdrop of similar coups in the Sahel region, where Mali experienced two military takeovers in 2020 and 2021 that ousted elected governments amid jihadi violence, and Niger’s presidential guard deposed President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023. These successive upheavals have undermined ECOWAS’s democratic norms, as sanctions and regional suspensions failed to compel timely elections. The trend signals a mortal danger to democracy: civilian institutions are weakened, electoral mandates hollowed out, and a precedent of deeply entrenched militarised power rapidly and increasingly normalised across the continent.
It is impossible to dismiss the grievances of African citizens, especially young people, frustrated by what they consider as the slow pace of progress under democratic governance. It is easy to forget, though, that the continent has had long, in many cases longer, stints with military dictatorships. Some have also highlighted the contradictions and weaknesses in Western democracies to support their argument that democracy is not a good fit for African realities. In the United States, for example, critics have cited the fact that, until the 1965 Civil Rights Acts- 189 years after the American revolution- a large group of American citizens, African Americans- could not vote in elections, especially in the southern part of the country. Until the nineteenth amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, American women were not guaranteed the right to vote. In the United Kingdom, the Representation of the People Act 1918 received Royal Assent on February 6, 1918, extending the vote to women over 30 who met property qualifications; full equal suffrage- granting all women the vote on the same terms as men- was achieved with the Equal Franchise Act on July 2, 1928. As of today- a whooping 809 years after the Magna Carta, the United Kingdom still retain unelected hereditary peers in its House of Lords.
These historical facts have been raised to support the argument that democracy is effectively a dynamic evolutionary process, and Western countries have required quite a long time to perfect- or more accurately improve- their democratic practice and make it fitting to their cultural and socio-political reality. In spite of their history, critics argue, Western democracies are force-feeding African countries with a "ready-made" western brand of democracy that does not allow for evolutionary process of fit and iterative improvement to take place. In the same breadth, other critics have argued, in effect, that the African continent does not have the luxury of hundreds of years to incrementally improve and make democracy fit for their cultural realities. For this group, military dictatorship is a viable option to enact the great leap forward in a rapidly changing world in which the African continent cannot afford to further drop back.
These arguments are decidedly simplistic. They also miss some fundamental points. Firstly, an argument against the weaknesses and contradictions of Western democracies is not an effective argument against democracy itself, as an ideal. It is much less a credible argument for military dictatorships. I also find the idea of hereditary peers an anachronism in the 21st century, and I consider the American concept of electoral college a pile of mess. Still, these are only matters of operationalise nuances that can be debated and corrected through the process that only democracy enables. There is the rub.
The compelling merit of representative, liberal democracy is that it gives ordinary citizens the agency to have a say in how their society is organised and governed, and the basic agency to enact the future they desire. As a First Principles ideal, it goes at the very heart of what it means to be human- with dignity, with voice, with agency. Against this there cannot be a strong counter argument that does not diminish the human person.
It is naive to assume that anyone who takes power through the barrel of a gun would rule altruistically for the benefit of others. But let us assume that this fantasy of the "good dictator" is in fact realisable. It will not take away a very important fact: it infantilises citizens and arrests societal and cultural progress. A human without the basic freedom to think and to will is not fundamentally different from a conditioned pet that is well loved and well protected by its owner. Autocracy inherently diminishes human dignity, but it is not just the individual humans that suffers. A society in which freedom of thought and expression is subject to the will- and whims- of the autocrat will sooner or later fall into atrophy. This is the short history of all dictatorships.
Democracy is hard work, of course it is. But it is precisely this character that makes it a distinctly human endeavour- summoning us to engage our vibrant intellects and formidable will in the service of collective good. This human calling cannot be outsourced without incurring severe damage, because to embrace the autocrat is also to abdicate responsibility and servitude. It is a short cut to a hard life. The slave is free from responsibility, deprived of agency.
Back to Traore. By the sound of it, the young officer is a folk hero in Burkina Faso, and beyond. This is probably the strongest reason for him to conduct a popular election, and embark on a purposeful programme of public mobilisation for the golden age of development in Burkina Faso. Traore has absolutely nothing to fear about a democratic election. He has all to gain, in fact. Right now he is giving the oxygen of legitimacy to his detractors, including those who may want to out him on the premise that he is a dictator.
** Seun Kolade is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation at Sheffield Business School, UK
