Mali

Amadou Touré, coup maker, coup victim, military ruler, and eventually civilian chief of state in Mali, died last week in Istanbul at the age of seventy-two. Touré dominated Mali's governance for some twenty years and, in death, is being praised as a "soldier of democracy." Following his successful 1991 coup against Moussa Traoré, military ruler for thirteen years, Touré orchestrated a transition to elections and civilian government. In 2002 he was elected president and, in 2007, reelected. In 2012, he was overthrown by a military coup. Since then, the country has been in turmoil, with Tuareg and jihadi insurrections seeming to gain strength. It was during Touré's civilian presidency that Mali was the darling of many Western commentators. After all, the country had a civilian government and regular elections. Mali's outstanding achievements in music and the arts lent a glow. Overlooked was flourishing corruption, narcotics trafficking, and the continued alienation of the northern part of the country. Too many observers mistook the forms of democracy and good governance for its substance. Outside observers viewed Mali as a conventional nation-state, just as they often do with other postcolonial countries. Hence their exaggerated emphasis on elections and, later, their failure to see the role played by corruption (including narcotics trafficking) in the body politic—as well as the limits to what Touré could do about it, even if he wanted to. Accordingly, the current criticism of Touré reflects the assumption that he should have been like the leader of a nation-state rather than what he was, the head of a highly unstable coalition of forces and interests artificially amalgamated by the colonial power into a single entity.

On October 5, Mali's interim president, retired colonel Bah Ndaw, announced his cabinet. As is frequent in West Africa, it is large, with twenty-five members. It includes civilians from the country's factions, including the perennially disaffected Tuaregs in the north, civil groups based in the capital, Bamako, and the armed factions that signed a peace agreement in 2015. But the key cabinet posts remain firmly in the hands of the military: defense, security, territorial administration, and national reconciliation. The responsibilities of defense and security are conventional, territorial administration is concerned with local government, while national reconciliation deals with ethnic issues. These ministers, along with the interim president, are active duty or retired army colonels. The prime minister, the foreign minister, and the minister of justice are civilians. But, those ministries are relatively weak. It is hard not to see them and the other civilian ministers as largely window-dressing. Mali in effect has a military government. The government has agreed to the demand of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for elections, and the restoration of civilian government will take place within eighteen months. Other ECOWAS demands have not been met, and ECOWAS sanctions remain in place. The media describes them as "crippling," but their actual impact is probably exaggerated. There is, of course, no guarantee that the interim government will agree to leave power after eighteen months. If there is a positive aspect to the Mali cloud, it is that there is, at least, a recognizable government now in place. It remains to be seen what the jihadist radical groups will do now. Presumably, their goal remains unchanged: destruction of the government in Bamako, whether military or civilian.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a September 22 UN General Assembly (UNGA) speech, made continued French military involvement contingent upon Mali's restoration of civilian rule. He was blunt: "They (the junta) must put Mali on the irreversible path of returning to civilian power and organize rapid elections." And, "France [...] can only remain engaged on this condition." As he has in the past, Macron was also clear that France has a low tolerance level for popular demonstrations against France, or francophone West African states that might be tempted by anti-French rhetoric: "The second these states want us to leave or consider that they can fight terrorism on their own, we will withdraw." The same day Macron was speaking at UNGA, there was a small anti-French demonstration in Bamako. The Mali junta appears impervious to pressures from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) to restore civilian government. Pressure from France might be different. France deploys more than 5,000 well-trained, well-equipped troops against jihadist extremist groups that seek to overthrow the government and destroy the political class in Mali and in its neighboring states. The French are assisted by some EU partners, and the United States provides logistical and intelligence support. Were France to withdraw, so, too, would its EU partners, and the continued U.S. presence, small though it is, would be called into question.  The jihadist operations in the Sahel have intensified and spread. French withdrawal might well lead to their destruction of Mali and some of its neighboring states. If the Mali junta remains intransigent, would the French really withdraw? West Africa is the French equivalent of the Russian "near abroad." For many French, close ties with francophone Africa makes their country more than simply a large state in the European Union. On the other hand, there is opposition in France to unending military engagement in the Sahel: some characterize the Sahel as France's Afghanistan.  A possible, even likely, outcome will be that the junta will adopt more civilian trappings, such as a genuinely civilian head of state that is acceptable to the Macron government, even if it must hold its noose. 

On September 21, the military junta that overthrew the Mali government of President Ibrahim Keita announced a transitional government. It is headed by retired Colonel Bah N'Daw, with junta leader Colonel Assimi Goïta as his vice president. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has insisted that the Mali military coup-makers step down and that a civilian transition government plan for new elections in eighteen months. (ECOWAS, despite its name, is also a West African regional security organization). The African Union (AU) expelled Mali in the immediate aftermath of the coup, and is supporting the ECOWAS call. For their part, the coup-makers are insisting on a military-led transition government, and that elections not take place for three years. It is likely that eventually the coup-makers and ECOWAS will reach an agreement that leaves the military in charge, though for less than three years. There is, of course, no certainty that the military will live up to any such agreement.   A retired colonel, Bah N'Daw is only technically a civilian. He has been a minister of defense, and he was an aide to Moussa Traore, the military ruler of Mali from 1968 to 1991. The junta announced that the president and the vice president were chosen by a transition committee made up of representatives of political parties and civil and religious groups; in other words, the political class. It is unclear whether a government headed by Bah N'Daw, which is a military government in all but name, will be acceptable to ECOWAS.  The Mali coup-makers, led by Col. Goïta, had met with ECOWAS in Ghana the week of September 14. The negotiations made little if any progress. Meanwhile, Bamako, Mali's capital, remains quiet. Based on media reporting, it is unclear whether there has been an upsurge in jihadist violence in the far north. The coup-makers released deposed president Keita a few days after the coup. In early September, media reported that he had been hospitalized; he has appeared to be frail. He has assumed no public role since he was deposed.   ECOWAS has imposed sanctions on Mali. ECOWAS states have closed their borders with Mali and have banned trade and financial flows. The impact of these sanctions is unclear. West African borders are highly porous, and ECOWAS states have limited capacity to enforce trade and financial sanctions. If, however, sanctions start to bite the Malian elite, there may be pressure on the military to compromise. Thus far, that does not appear to have happened. The coup-makers have made no further public statements about the French and UN military presence in the country since they welcomed their continuation in the coup's aftermath.

When Mali’s summer of discontent culminated in a coup on August 18, media coverage was soon full of images of celebrating citizens, and opposition leaders expressed approval of the military takeover. The scenes of jubilation in the streets could give observers the impression that democratic governance has no future in the country. But this is misleading.  Recent Afrobarometer data shows that the people of Mali strongly support the rule of law, and a majority support democratic governance and oppose military rule. Malians want government that works and is accountable to citizens, and there is no clear majority for elevating one of these priorities over the other. History strongly suggests that the recent coup will not deliver on either front, but as in Zimbabwe in 2017, it fulfills the immediate demand for change before failing to deliver better governing results over time. For many years, Mali has suffered from a profound disconnect between the priorities of its citizens and those of its political elites. The international actors attempting to help stabilize the situation have in some cases actually widened that gap, by ignoring political dysfunction in favor of a narrow definition of security concerns, and by pretending that shallow, Bamako-centric political processes could meet the country’s desperate governance needs. Moving Mali forward requires political will from domestic and international actors to discard the old playbook and stitch together a stronger foundation of political representation and legitimacy, and, where the requisite political will exists, a willingness to invest in the unglamorous work of strengthening governing capacity. It’s a challenging set of tasks, and while the primary drivers of Mali’s future must be the Malian people, they will need clear-eyed, activist diplomacy from Mali’s international partners. For the United States, that means coordination but not deference to other international actors, and an understanding that Mali’s political crisis has an internal logic that is affected, but cannot be resolved, by regional dynamics. In other words, a Mali-specific strategy for supporting political progress must be understood as an essential element of any Sahelian stability strategy, and diplomatic skill and resources will need the same support in Congress and the foreign policy community that counterterrorism support has enjoyed.

Despite the crowd’s jubilation in Bamako, the arrest of President Ibrahim B. Keita, Prime Minister Boubou Cisse, the minister of finance, the president of the National Assembly, and other government officials seems unlikely to result in fundamental change. An estimated half of Mali's population lives in severe poverty, ethnic divisions are chronically unaddressed, and Islamist jihadis roam much of the northern half of the country. Those realities are unlikely to change as a result of a coup. Subsequent to their success, the coup makers are justifying themselves by citing the corruption, nepotism, and all-around bad governance of the Keita regime. Initial media accounts tied the coup to popular discontent spearheaded by civil society and a charismatic imam and linked it to fall-out from corrupt elections earlier in the year. But, rather than a popular revolution, this coup appears to have been carried out by five colonels, calling themselves the National Commission for the People’s Salvation. This entity is led by Gen. Cheick Fanta Mady Dembele, whom some local commentators see as the real leader of the coup, though he remains in the background. The coup makers likely have the support of the broad political class, based in Bamako, dissatisfied by the Keita government's response to popular unrest. The military and the political class, based on past performance, is uninterested in the fundamental social and political change that would be necessary to address the country's dysfunction. Once falsely viewed by Western commentators and policy makers as the poster child of African democracy and good governance, Mali's current descent into unending crisis is usually dated from the 2012 military unrest and Tuareg efforts to establish a separate state—Azawad. (Tuareg separatism reflects unresolved ethnic differences dating from French colonial times.) Then, radical jihadis captured the Tuareg separatist movement and were soon seen as threatening the destruction of the Bamako government. French intervention forestalled that outcome. Since then, the Malian and French militaries, African regional forces, and a UN military presence has failed to defeat the Islamists, and security has continued to deteriorate. (The United States has provided significant financial support to the anti-jihadi effort and provides logistical and other support to French forces.) Insofar as this latest coup highlights the dysfunction of the Malian state, it will likely benefit the jihadis that have been expanding their area of operation in the wider region.   Thus far, international reaction to this latest coup has been hand-wringing. The African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has denounced it and called for sanctions. The French and American governments have issued statements condemning the coup. The UN Security Council is expected to discuss it and will likely denounce it. France has the largest modern military force in West Africa, with some 5,000 personnel. Successive Paris governments have viewed the Sahel as the "near abroad" and of vital national interest. But, French military intervention in the past has been denounced as "neo-colonial;" some local commentators are suggesting that Gen. Dembele is staying in the background because of fear of the perception that he is “backed” by France. The Macron government is saying that France will remain engaged in Mali, but for how long and under what circumstances remains to be seen. The French public appears increasingly fatigued by the seemingly never-ending fighting in the Sahel, "our Afghanistan." It is also unclear what the restoration of the Keita regime or new and likely flawed elections could accomplish. Nevertheless, a possible, perhaps likely, outcome will be a deal among the military and the political class that leads to new elections and another "rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic." The coup makers have already announced that they will establish a "civilian" government to carry out new elections.

Opposition supporters, fed up with a corrupt political system, lack of economic opportunity, and continued violence, are demanding the president’s resignation.

On June 5, France announced that its forces killed Abdelmalek Droukdel and many in his inner circle. Droukdel was the "emir" or leader of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The attack took place on June 3. France also announced the capture of Mohamed Mrabat, the group commander in Mali of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, who was taken in May. France has said that the operations were carried out with the intelligence and surveillance support of Algeria the United States. The decapitation strike, killing many in the leadership of AQIM, is a major achievement of France and its partners, and is likely to reduce the terror group’s ability to conduct attacks for the immediate future. It may also reduce domestic criticism in France of the Macron administration about what seems to be an interminable war that resembles U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. But, "decapitation" does not mean defeat. The killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 has not led to the end of their respective organizations, but rather to new leadership. It should be anticipated that AQIM will similarly find new leadership, albeit after a likely bloody internal struggle, and the Islamic State will find a replacement for Mrabat.  Jihadi terrorism, whether of the Islamic State or al-Qaeda variety, has roots in a variation of the Salafist revival that seeks a purified Islam and the establishment of a polity based on Islamic law. Further, it reflects local ethnic rivalries and the popular resentment of exploitive post-colonial elites, fed partly by extreme poverty. The death of Droukdel does not mean that these drivers of terrorism are going away. Droukdel's career is emblematic of the Algerian dimension to terrorism in the western Sahel. Born in 1971, Droukdel was Algerian and well educated, with a degree in mathematics from an Algerian university. He is thought to have first fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s before returning to Algeria. He was an active participant in that country’s civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002. The war left between 150,000 and 200,000 people dead, and was noteworthy for its brutality. It resulted from an army coup following an Islamist victory in general elections. The army largely prevailed though there was a political settlement accepted by some—though not all—jihadists. Subsequent Algerian governments have pushed residual jihadi groups south into the Sahel, so that jihadi and criminal groups (they often overlap) operating in Mali, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere sometimes have Algerian roots.  Droukdel continued the fight after the civil war ended in 2002. Highly charismatic and a good speaker, he eventually merged his own group with al-Qaeda. He was sentenced to death in absentia by an Algerian court for three bomb attacks in Algiers in 2007. A munitions expert, he is likely to have introduced suicide bombing in Algeria, from whence it spread to elsewhere in West Africa. He led the 2015 assault on a hotel in Ouagadougou that left 30 dead and 150 injured. He credibly is associated with kidnapping operations in the Western Sahel. This post has been updated to add a source. 

In a follow up to his remarks in December, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the UN special representative and head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) sounded the alarm on growing militant and jihadi violence. In his January 8 briefing to the UN Security Council, he said the “devastating surge” in terrorism has “shaken public confidence.” He focused on Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, where casualties from terrorism have increased fivefold since 2016, with 4,000 deaths in 2019 compared to 770 in 2016. He estimated those displaced in their own countries number half a million with an additional twenty-five thousand who have fled across national borders. He also noted that terrorist activity, broadly speaking, is moving from west to east. As though it were underscoring Dr. Chambas’s presentation, a rocket attack on a joint Malian, French, and UN base in northern Mali on January 9 wounded twenty, of whom eighteen were UN peacekeepers. Likely unconnected to the upsurge in violence further west, Boko Haram activity in the Lake Chad basin (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon) continues, seemingly unabated. Militants, claiming to be the Boko Haram offshoot Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA), killed some twenty Nigerian soldiers around January 8. Civilian casualties are a fraction of what they once were at the height of the Boko Haram conflict from mid-2013 to the end of 2015. But, according to the Nigeria Security Tracker, military casualties reached their highest levels over the past year. The military has resorted to a “super camp” strategy, retreating to fortified towns and cities, ostensibly from which to launch attacks. This effectively cedes control of rural areas to ISWA and Boko Haram. Such attacks in Nigeria and West Africa are usually labeled as “jihadi terrorism.” The often unstated assumption is that they are somehow related to international terrorist organizations, such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. In some cases, this may be true. However, as Chambas noted in his briefing, terrorism, criminal behavior, and intercommunal conflict are often interrelated and local, especially in those large areas in the Sahel where government authority is weak. Chambas said, where the state is weak, “extremists provide safety and protection to populations, as well as social services in exchange for loyalty.” As Chambas went on to say, a key to countering terrorism is winning “the trust and support of local populations.” This is a tall order where governments are corrupt, unresponsive, and captured by an elite cabal.

In response to the proliferation of ostensibly jihadist groups in the Sahel, governments have deployed more than 20,000 international and local troops, comprising 4,500 French soldieries, 13,000 UN peacekeepers, and about 5,000 troops connected to the G5 Sahel—an initiative godfathered by France and including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. But terror groups have grown more deadly.   Earlier this month, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack that killed fifty-three soldiers and a civilian at a military base near the Malian-Nigerien border. Operating in the Sahel through its affiliate, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), it has accelerated its operations in Mali, Burkina Faso, and now in Niger, despite a significant military presence. By the end of 2019, it is predicted that ISGS will have been responsible for six hundred killings.  The relationship between the Islamic State and its affiliates (and between affiliates) in the region, principally ISGS and the Islamic State in West Africa, are unclear. Fighters can have a variety of motivations, such as disillusionment with their government, poverty, or a lack of economic opportunity, and their focus appears to be drive principally by local factors, as opposed to international jihad.  According to French media, there is growing indigenous resentment of these foreign troops, and much of it seems specifically directed at those from France. They are seen as closely tied to local country governments, which are often perceived as exploitative and out of touch with the people they ostensibly govern. For example, Ibrahim Kebe, host of a Malian anti-government radio station, characterized the African governments involved as “national lackeys under the orders of Paris,” and that “in the name of the French people, the multinationals are pillaging our resources.”  The Sahel is among the poorest regions in the world. The natural environment is delicate but harsh. It is true that there are great mineral and other riches, but their exploitation has not benefitted the people who live there. Political realities are intensely local and complicated; they are often misunderstood in national capitals, much less in Paris or Washington. A foreign military presence is bound to be disruptive, but that political granularity means that it is difficult for outsiders to judge how widespread resentment of outside forces is, or what the political impact is.

Jacob Zenn is an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University and is a senior fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. The Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) claimed a May 16 attack near Tongo Tongo, Niger, killing more than twenty soldiers not far from the Malian border. In March it issued a photo of its members in Burkina Faso and in April it claimed an attack on a militia in Mali. But, it is not clear that the ISWA group based primarily in Nigeria is behind those attacks.  In March 2015, Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and its “caliph,” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leading to the rebranding of Boko Haram as ISWA. The group has since gone through two leadership transitions and is now split into at least two discernable factions. One is ISWA, which is still pledged to the Islamic State and whose third leader is Abu Abdullah Ibn Umar al-Barnawi or “Ba Idrisa.” The other comprises members still loyal to Shekau who defected with him when the Islamic State rejected him as leader; it is referred to as Boko Haram, even though both are “Boko Haram factions.”  After an attack on a Shia procession in Kano in November 2015, which was claimed by ISWA, both factions have focused their attacks exclusively on northeastern Nigeria and the borderlands of Chad, Cameroon, and Niger around Lake Chad. Generally speaking, ISWA tends to focus on military targets and Shekau’s Boko Haram tends to pilfer from villages while also targeting the Nigerian military. ISWA has portrayed itself as a more “civilian-friendly” alternative to Boko Haram and, to an extent, it has lived up to this billing.  The recent claims of attacks by ISWA in the border regions of Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Mali, therefore seem out of character, geographically speaking. In fact, all indications suggest that those three attacks in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali were carried out by the group formerly known as Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS), whose leader is Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi. Recall that in 2017, ISGS was blamed for and claimed an ambush of U.S. and Nigerien soldiers in Tongo Tongo that killed four U.S. Special Forces, which is the same location as the attack on May 16. Although al-Sahrawi has since been recognized by the Islamic State, including by name in Abubakar al-Baghdadi’s April 2019 video appearance, al-Sahrawi’s ISGS has not apparently earned “province” status.  What this suggests is that ISGS has, at least in name, been subsumed under the banner of the Ba Idrisa-led ISWA. This means that ISWA as we have up to now understood it—based in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin—is not conducting attacks in Niger, Burkina Faso, or Mali, but is merely claiming attacks that are instead carried out by ISGS. This is a new trend that is important for followers of ISWA and Boko Haram to recognize, especially those who keep track of attack data. They need to decide whether attacks claimed by ISWA were actually carried out by ISWA, or, in fact, carried out by ISGS, and whether this distinction is worth making at all. For now, this is fairly easy: almost any attack in Niger, Burkina Faso, or Mali can be said to be by ISGS, while those in and around the Lake Chad Basin can be said to be carried out by ISWA. What could complicate this clear geographical distinction, however, are reports of ISWA members, such as Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the ISWA leader who was deposed by Ba Idrisa, talking to jihadists in Mali and of ISWA relocating cells to northwestern Nigeria near where ISGS leader al-Sahrawi operates in Niger. Therefore, in the future the areas of operations between the “two ISWAs” could overlap.

Islamist terrorist groups in northeast Burkina Faso are following a strategy of violence reminiscent in some ways of Boko Haram’s early days in Nigeria. The groups are attacking Protestant and Catholic churches, killing pastors, priests, and congregants, and also teachers in secular schools. In a May 12 attack on the town of Dablo in northern Burkina Faso, “gunmen” killed a Catholic priest and five congregants, burned the church and places serving alcohol, and looted other commercial establishments. The attackers numbered about twenty. On May 10, apparently in a separate incident, militants killed five teachers. Similarities to Boko Haram include targeting Christians and teachers in secular schools. The theological basis of both appears to be a similar, extremist variant of Salafist Islamic now thought to be associated with the Islamic State. Based on that theology is a similar hostility to all things western and secular. Like in Nigeria’s northeast, government authority in northern Burkina Faso has been weak following the 2014 ouster of long-time strongman Blaise Compaore. But unlike Boko Haram, the terrorists in Burkina Faso do not appear to have a charismatic leader with a media presence like Boko Haram’s Abubakar Shekau. Furthermore, Burkina Faso has in France a close ally that is prepared to intervene when needed, as it recently did to rescue four hostages. The extent and nature of the groups’ ties in both countries to outside terror networks in not completely clear. Boko Haram appears to be largely indigenous, with little or no tactical and strategic coordination with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), despite similar rhetoric and apparent communication. Though in Burkina Faso there appear to be links with Islamist groups in Mali, details are sparse.

Each year, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) issues Ten Conflicts to Worry About, [PDF] a report flagging serious conflicts that are often underreported. The Sahel was listed as the region “most likely to be the geopolitical dilemma of 2019.” Among the others on the list, Yemen is "most likely to induce 2019’s worst humanitarian crisis," Philippines is "most likely to see an increase in authoritarianism," and Iraq is "most at risk of returning to civil war." South Sudan and Sudan, the two other sub-Saharan African conflicts on the list, are titled “most likely to see second order conflict problems,” and “most at risk of government collapse,” respectively.  The ACLED is a mapping and analysis project on political violence in Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. Highly credible and widely used by analysts, its data and analysis is freely available for public use. As a non-governmental organization, ACLED receives financial support from the U.S. Department of State, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tableau Foundation, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the University of Texas at Austin, and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). According to ACLED, it has also received funding in the past from the European Union. All good company for a clear-eyed NGO.  The analysis of the Sahel dilemma highlights the resurgence of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria and the Lake Chad basin, including its successful attacks on military installations and the occupation of some territory, as well as jihadist activity in Burkina Faso and Mali. Farmer-herder conflict in Nigeria’s middle belt, similar conflicts in Mali, and the activities of community-based militias are also discussed. ACLED’s bottom line: “the lack of political solutions to both jihadist insurgencies and inter-communal violence across the Sahel will foster an environment that allows these conflicts to expand.” Nigeria, West Africa’s hegemon, holds its presidential and parliamentary elections on February 16. It remains to be seen whether Boko Haram factions will attempt to disrupt them, or whether the large numbers of internally displaced will be able to participate. The past eight years have shown that military force does not work, but few candidates at any level have suggested a political approach toward jihadist radicalism.   

Sub-Saharan Africa is urbanizing at the fastest rate in the world. Western commentators, notably McKinsey in its 2016 report “Lions on the Move II,” see rapid urbanization as increasing the continent’s p roductivity. McKinsey states, “urbanization has a strong correlation with the rate of real GDP growth,” and that “productivity in cities is more than double that in the countryside.” Other observers, however, question whether urban infrastructure—especially water and education—can meet the needs of an exploding population. The Financial Times recently published a balanced report on the pros and cons of rapid African urbanization. It focuses on Bamako, Mali, as an example of the continent-wide phenomenon. It cites a World Bank estimate that Bamako’s population today, at 3.5 million, is 10 times larger than it was at independence in 1960. A professor at the University of Bamako comments that that the city’s growth is a “catastrophe foretold,” that “Bamako is a time-bomb.” Among other shortcomings, the professor notes that the city lacks a land registry even as real estate booms. The exploding population growth translates into high land prices that encourage corruption. Peppered through the Financial Times piece are arresting statistical notes. For example, a World Bank economist observes that Africa is now 40 percent urban with a per capita GDP of $1,100. By the time Asia reached that level of urbanization, its per capita GDP was $3,500. Statistics about Africa are generally weak, but for frequent travelers to Africa, the explosion of the urban population is obvious. So, too, are the slums, the lack of schools, water shortages, and unpaved roads. Unemployed male youth are ubiquitous and do, indeed, constitute a potential time bomb with respect to political instability. Experience shows that urbanization cannot be reversed, as few residents are willing to return to the countryside unless compelled to do so, as occurred in Chairman Mao’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. But no African state has comparable means of repression should it wish to reduce its urban population. African urbanization will continue and public authorities having few tools with which to manage it.