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Mali faces huge economic and political challenges more than a month after the military coup that toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, analysts say.
Plagued by corruption and poverty, the Sahel state was already battling a severe recession, compounded by a jihadist insurgency and ethnic violence, when the military took control on August 18.
Mali is now entering a recession as the coronavirus pandemic and sanctions imposed by its neighbors take effect, said economist Etienne Fakaba Sissoko.
The 15-nation ECOWAS bloc, fearing the restless country could turn into chaos, immediately closed Mali’s borders and imposed trade restrictions, pressuring the junta to swiftly hand over power.
The impact on the landlocked, undiversified, under-industrialized and import-dependent economy will be severe, said Fakaba Sissoko, a professor of economics at the University of Bamako and a former presidential adviser.
“The immediate consequence is a reduction in public spending. This has a direct impact on the population,” he said.
After a coup in 2012 that toppled then-President Amadou Toumani Touré, a week-long trade embargo sent the country’s economy plunging into recession.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had in May revised Mali’s growth rate for 2020 from five percent to less than one percent due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“If we add sanctions to this, there is no doubt that we will sadly be in recession. Mali will not escape the recession,” Sissoko said.
‘Crisis of morality’
Compounding the country’s political problems is a “moral crisis” caused by the issue of the return to civilian rule, said Lamine Savane, a political science researcher at the University of Segou.
A group of officials selected by the board have elected a 70-year-old retired colonel, Bah Ndaw, as interim president, with the leader of the board, Colonel Assimi Goita, as vice president.
The transitional government would remain in place for a maximum of 18 months until the national elections were held.
Ndaw will be sworn in on Friday, when ECOWAS is also likely to decide whether to lift sanctions, the bloc’s mediator, former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, said Wednesday.
The longstanding dispute over the transition could deplete the dynamism of accountability and justice, Savane said.
The so-called June 5 Movement, or M5, an alliance of political parties, unions, religious figures and NGOs, has repeatedly lobbied for a status equal to that of the junta in the interim government.
But Savane said the lure of high office undermined and divided the M5, leading some to look the other way when it came to issues that were once at the heart of his movement.
These are the same mistakes that were made in 2012, Savane said, plunging Mali into crisis for years.
That coup was followed by an insurrection in the north of the country that turned into a jihadist insurgency that now threatens neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.
Calls against corruption and impunity during this year’s protests have died down, and some of the most criticized figures of the Keita regime, including his son Karim and intelligence chief Moussa Diawara, have escaped the surrender of Keita. accounts, Savane noted.
“These people are not worried,” he said. “This raises the question of whether those who took power really want to change things.”
