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08/04/2006 | Benin: Inauguration of New Benin President Marks Generational Shift

WMRC Staff

Today 54-year-old economist Dr Yayi Boni will be inaugurated as president of Benin, closing the book on a quarter-century dominated by outgoing president Mathieu Kérékou.

 

Global Insight Perspective

Significance

Dr Boni was elected with nearly 75% of the vote, giving him a strong mandate to implement his promises of economic reform and anti-corruption drives.

Implications

The new President represents a younger generation of more technocratic faces, a breath of fresh air after voters turned their backs on most veterans of the country's political elite.

Outlook

Benin's ruling elite has paid scant attention to administrative and economic management over the last two years, as public life became increasingly dominated by jockeying for position in a post-Kérékou dispensation. Dr Boni's main task will be to haul the country back on track before the neglect incurs any lasting damage.

Risk Ratings

 Putting Flesh on the Boni: A Potted Biography

Yayi Boni was born in 1952 in the central town of Tchaourou to a Nago (Yoruba) father and a mother of mixed Peul and Bariba heritage. He was brought up in the Muslim tradition by his uncle, before converting to Catholicism during his schooling. This personal history is politically relevant in that it allows him to bridge gaps in a country of great diversity, in which regional, ethnic and (to a lesser extent) religious differences can be sources of division, if rarely of tension. Boni studied at a tertiary level in Benin and Senegal, before working briefly in commercial banking in Benin, and then for the regional Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) from 1977 to 1989. He then took a Doctorate in Economic Sciences from Paris' IV Dauphiné University (France), before returning to Benin in 1992. There he spent two years as advisor on monetary and banking affairs to President Nicéphore Soglo (incumbent from 1991 to 1996). Having cut his teeth in public affairs, he then took up the post of head of the West African Development Bank (BOAD) in December 1994, before becoming a fairly late challenger in the just-culminated presidential race in his home country. 
The peaceful transition from a quarter-century dominated by one man to a new president with a strong mandate to represent the aspirations of a younger generation leads Global Insight to upgrade the country's political risk rating from 2.75 to 2.50. Dr Boni's plans to put the country's recently lax economic and administrative management back on track bode well for the country's economic risk profile, although Global Insight will be looking for concrete proof of improved performance before also reviewing the economic risk rating. 

Manifesto Destiny

With his younger, successful, technocratic profile, Dr Yayi Boni represented a breath of fresh air to voters otherwise presented with a cast list drawn from minor characters involved in the past few unimpressive years of the Kérékou administration or the accompanying bickering opposition. While other candidates spent freely to secure the support of various ethno-regional and local factions, Boni assembled a coalition of civic groups that mobilised over 35,000 agents and observers across the country to make sure that each vote for their candidate counted. 

Now he is to be inaugurated, what will Beninois voters get for their efforts? It is noticeable that Boni - like all populists hoping to take as large a share of the vote as possible - has been short on potentially divisive specifics. As an economist and technocrat banker, observers might expect Boni to be an enthusiastic reformer, but in a country with perennial cost-of-living and employment problems, neo-liberal reforms are often viewed with suspicion and meet with public resistance. Instead, Boni has concentrated on his credentials in good economic management, a quality that has been lacking in the country of late (see Benin: 17 November 2005: Election 2006: Funding Shortfall Puts Benin's Elections in Doubt). His reform drive begins with the basics, such as paying the salaries of civil servants on time. 

On a more complex level, the incoming President has also outlined his vision of a strategic development path for the country. Given its small size and few resources, Benin will never lead the field as a commodities producer. Equally, it shares the constraints of many African economies in being highly uncompetitive as a manufacturer for export. So Yayi Boni has outlined a development plan based on the already significant services sector. The ongoing impasse in Côte d'Ivoire gives Benin an opening to enlarge the transport and shipping services it provides for landlocked neighbours Burkina Faso and Niger, while the oil boom in neighbouring giant Nigeria gives Benin scope to embellish its existing re-export trade. This will require not only investments in infrastructure, but also in the state's own capacity if it is to capture as revenues a greater proportion of the wealth that currently flows through the country untapped. 

Outlook and Implications

Boni's strong mandate may give him leeway to make some broad-brush changes, but it will also be a double-edged sword, carrying as it does the possibility of expectations that cannot be met. The experience of former president Soglo, elected on a crest of popular feeling before being unceremoniously kicked out after only one term, shows that the goodwill of the Beninois electorate is not bottomless. So the new President will face pressure to deliver noticeable progress well before the expiry of his first five-year term if he is to hope for a second. In doing so, he will run up against vested interests at all levels, as well as structural constants that are extremely difficult to overcome, such as the difficulty of bringing the informal sector under control in a country with such permeable borders, or the trickiness of enforcing standards in public life where salaries are so low and temptations so great. The new administration also has an accent on moral renewal, but in tackling such problems, Boni will need all the public goodwill he can tap into.

 

Contact: Raul Dary

24 Hartwell Ave.
Lexington, MA 02421, USA
Tel: 781.301.9314
Cel: 857.222.0556
Fax: 781.301.9416
raul.dary@globalinsight.com

www.globalinsight.com and www.wmrc.com

 

WMRC (Reino Unido)

 



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Center for the Study of the Presidency
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