Paris---Fed up with immovable African presidents and political dynasties, campaigners across the continent are joining forces to "turn the page" on leaders who see power as an end in itself.
As Nigeria marked its first ever democratic change of power following national elections, a report published this week by the Tournons La Page (Turn the Page) campaign group highlighted just how unusual incumbent Goodluck Jonathan's decision to concede defeat was.
According to the report, 88 percent of Togolese and 87 percent of people in Gabon have only known one ruling family.
Burkina Faso dictator Blaise Compaore was driven out by his people last October after 27 years of rule while President Paul Biya of Cameroon and his Congolese counterpart Denis Sassou Nguesso have each accumulated more than thirty years in power.
Cameroon's democracy hunters may well be casting envious glances over the border to Nigeria where Muhammadu Buhari scored a narrow electoral victory over Jonathan in the country's March 28 poll.
With a raft of upcoming elections in mind, the regional appeal to turn the page was launched late last year by NGOs in 30 African and European countries and signed by prominent African figures including Senegalese singer Youssou N'dour and Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe.
The call for change harks back to the multi-party politics which began to emerge in the 1990s.
Twenty years on the campaigners are seeking to energise ordinary people and make a round of elections throughout Africa over the next couple of years result in an end to the dynasties.
"We realised that Congolese civil society was becoming more amorphous... and was not playing its role," said Jean-Chrysostome Kijana, head of the New Dynamic of Civil Society group founded in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2013.
- The 'dictators union' -
He was in Paris for a conference organised by 'Turn the Page', at which he spoke alongside campaigners from Cameroon, Congo Gabon and Togo.
New movements are springing up and inspiring each other; "Enough is Enough" in Senegal and the "Citizens' Broom" in Burkina Faso were trailblazers, recently joined by similar groups in Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The fall of Compaore in Burkina Faso and the proposal by Senegal's President Macky Sall to reduce his own mandate by two years have fuelled hopes that public mobilisation elsewhere can bring about change.
AFP
