West African elites and the development wager
I. Elites and development: who and what are we talking about?
We showed, in a previous publication, why the military regimes of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) would find it very difficult to reproduce East Asia's developmental authoritarianism. If it is true that leadership matters, the kind that promotes development cannot be reduced to the exercise of authority, still less to the mere preservation of power. It presupposes a horizon long enough to organise collective action around growth in per-capita income, productivity gains and the transformation of economic and social structures.
At different moments in history, certain groups have exerted disproportionate influence on the triggering, conduct or institutionalisation of such transformations. These are the elites. Who are they today in West Africa and the Sahel? To what extent can they be described as developmental? And how do they compare with the ruling coalitions that led the take-off of several East Asian economies or, in a very different African context, that of Botswana?
Since Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) and Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941), the social sciences have generally used the term elite to designate the organised minority that occupies the most influential positions in a society. Joseph Schumpeter extended this insight by defining democracy, in its minimal sense, as a method of selecting rulers through competition between ruling elites. More recently, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson contrasted extractive elites, which lock institutions in order to preserve their rents, with coalitions that, on the contrary, accept a widening of economic and political opportunities. Stefan Dercon, for his part, emphasises the possibility of a development bargain: an often implicit agreement whereby dominant groups conclude that growth and productive transformation offer better prospects of survival and enrichment than immediate predation.
These approaches diverge on the institutions required and the sequencing of reforms, but they share a common denominator: elites are the groups capable of disproportionately influencing the allocation of resources, the definition of rules and collective decisions. Their power may be political, administrative, economic, military, religious, traditional, intellectual or media-based.
In West African societies, one may distinguish, without treating them as hermetic categories, the political leaders who control appointments and the allocation of public resources; the senior civil servants and technocrats who administer the economy and act as an interface with external partners; the military and security elites who hold the means of coercion; the entrepreneurs, financiers, traders and beneficiaries of public procurement; the traditional and religious authorities who play a legitimising and mediating role; and finally the academics, journalists, civic organisations and producers of public discourse. To these groups are added, in several countries, religious intellectuals trained in the Arab or Islamic world, who contest both Western cultural hegemony and certain local and brotherhood-based forms of Islam.
These various components are linked by family, partisan, regional, economic or generational ties. They therefore do not constitute separate worlds, but rather a system of interdependencies in which political leaders become entrepreneurs, businessmen finance parties, senior civil servants move between government and international organisations, and religious or traditional authorities take part in regulating the political order.
The development literature sometimes contrasts predatory elites with developmental elites too sharply. In the real experience of East Asia, most ruling coalitions combined rent-seeking, institution-building and productive investment. The relevant question is less whether elites are virtuous than what mechanisms lead them to channel a growing share of resources into productivity, human capital, infrastructure and the creation of competitive firms.
Acemoglu and Robinson stress inclusive institutions and the need to prevent dominant groups from blocking the "creative destruction" that is a fundamental engine of economic progress (Schumpeter). Dercon takes a more voluntarist and sequential view: several countries began their transformation before disposing of fully inclusive institutions, because a decisive fraction of their elites had wagered that growth was a positive-sum game. Between pure predation and completed institutional inclusion, there thus lies a space of compromise in which elites, without renouncing their interests, agree to tie them to a collective development project.
It is within this space that our inquiry is located. Every society rests on some arrangement among dominant groups, but not all arrangements are developmental. Some prevent violence or organise the sharing of positions and rents. Others make electoral alternation possible without deeply transforming the economy. A developmental pact requires more: investment, productivity, education, diversification and the expansion of competitive firms must become sufficiently continuous objectives to survive changes of government and factional rivalries.
II. From elite compromise to a transformation pact
The East Asian developmental states generally combined a competent administration, strong coordinating capacity, close cooperation with the private sector and a discipline of performance imposed on firms benefiting from credit, protection or public contracts. The state did not immediately eliminate rents: it tried to make them conditional on investment, exports, technological learning and rising productivity. The regimes were often authoritarian, but their leaders had tied part of their legitimacy and survival to economic success.
Botswana offers a closer African comparator, though a very imperfect one. Its success did not rest on the intensive industrialisation of South Korea or Taiwan, but on a durable political compromise, relatively prudent management of the diamond rent, a competent administration and the allocation of a substantial share of mining revenues to infrastructure and public services. The country nevertheless remained dependent on diamonds, unequal and insufficiently diversified. It corresponds less to an Asian developmental state than to a rentier state that has managed to channel a substantial part of its rent into development.
These comparators lead us to examine West African countries along five dimensions: the stabilisation of political competition; the competence and autonomy of the administration; the distributive or productive use of rents; the state's capacity to coordinate and discipline economic interests; and the continuity of the transformation project beyond individuals and governments.
Ghana: an institutional pact stronger than the productive pact
Ghana comes closer than most countries in the region to an institutionalised elite compromise. The transition begun under Jerry Rawlings, followed by alternations between the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party, gradually established that an electoral defeat meant neither permanent exclusion nor destruction of the losing camp's fundamental interests. The alternations of 2000, 2008 and 2016, and recourse to the Supreme Court after the contested election of 2012, reinforced the credibility of the rules.
The Ghanaian elite can be described as a competitive institutional elite. The main political factions know that they can return to power through the ballot box. This predictability has protected the administration, the judiciary, civic organisations and certain economic institutions from a complete reset at every change of majority. It has also fostered the emergence of a national private sector in financial services, telecommunications, agro-industry and the digital economy.
The political compromise has not, however, translated into a sufficiently binding productive pact. Competition between the two main parties encourages pre-electoral spending, partisan appointments, the expansion of certain public jobs and the distributive use of resources. Successive governments have supported growth and investment, but without durably disciplining public finances, protected firms or beneficiaries of public contracts. The debt crisis that peaked in 2022 was a reminder of the fragility of macroeconomic discipline.
The economy has diversified beyond cocoa into mining, oil, telecommunications and some manufacturing segments. But much of the employment has shifted to relatively low-productivity urban services rather than to an export industry capable of absorbing labour on a large scale.
Ghana is therefore close to the developmental pact in the credibility of its political order, but more distant in the weakness of its productive discipline. Compared with Botswana, it has more open political competition and a more vigorous civil society, but its budgetary management is less predictable. Its elite bargain is still more about democracy and stability than about a durable industrial strategy.
Senegal: a civil compromise to be converted into a transformation coalition
Senegal rests on a civil, administrative and intellectual elite that inherits an old state, a relatively solid legal tradition and a strong presence of cadres in public life. Its political compromise brings together the administration, the parties, urban elites, the Sufi brotherhoods, local notables and an active civil society. It has helped moderate conflicts and prevent the military from installing itself in the political arena.
Abdou Diouf's acceptance of his defeat by Abdoulaye Wade in 2000 was a major moment of elite agency. It showed that power-holders could accept an institutional exit without losing all place in the political order. The alternation of 2012 confirmed this norm. More recent tensions, however, were a reminder that the democratic pact is never definitively acquired and that the presidentialisation of the regime, the political use of the judiciary or succession conflicts can weaken established rules.
The Senegalese elite can be described as a republican elite of mediation. Its main achievement is to have preserved the civil character of the state and avoided the ruptures that, elsewhere, brought arbitrariness, rights violations and administrative disorganisation. The Muslim brotherhoods have generally contributed to this mediation, without constituting a homogeneous bloc or standing outside the exchange of influence and resources with the state.
On the economic side, Senegal long combined stability, services, public investment, external aid and large projects. Since the 2010s, it has accelerated infrastructure investment and sought to strengthen competitiveness. Growth has improved, but territorial inequalities, the low productivity of many jobs and insufficient diversification remain significant.
Entering the oil and gas era is now a decisive test. New revenues can contribute to financing human capital, electricity, agricultural productivity and diversification. They can also fuel presidential centralisation, politicised public procurement and a new rentier economy. The real question is therefore not only sound accounting management of hydrocarbons, but their integration into a productive learning strategy.
Senegal comes close to a developmental pact through its administrative continuity, its civilian tradition and its capacity for mediation. It remains distant because of missteps in public-finance management, notably external debt, weak industrial discipline and the uncertainty surrounding the use of the new rent. Its compromise is more advanced in the stabilisation of political competition than in the transformation of the economy.
Côte d'Ivoire: a modernising coalition still insufficiently institutionalised
Côte d'Ivoire presents almost the mirror image of Ghana and Senegal. It has shown a strong capacity to mobilise investment, deliver infrastructure and coordinate with firms, but its political compromise has been less stable and less inclusive.
Since Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Ivorian elites have placed growth, export agriculture, foreign capital and economic administration at the centre of their project. The model rested on an alliance between the state, agricultural producers, business circles, the technocracy and external partners. It produced a long phase of prosperity, but depended heavily on the personal authority of the president and his ability to arbitrate regional, land and economic interests.
The succession crisis revealed that this compromise had not been sufficiently transformed into impersonal institutions. The rivalries between Henri Konan Bédié, Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo, the politicisation of ivoirité, land conflicts, the 1999 coup, the 2002 rebellion and the 2010-2011 post-electoral crisis exposed the fragility of the national accord.
Since 2012, the Ivorian state has recovered a strong capacity for investment and coordination. Growth has drawn on infrastructure, commercial agriculture, services, private investment and gradual diversification. Côte d'Ivoire also has a more developed economic administration and a more established national entrepreneurial class than most Sahelian countries.
Its elite can therefore be described as technocratic and modernising. Three limitations, however, still separate it from a fully established developmental pact. The strategy remains heavily personalised around presidential power; firms benefiting from protection, concessions or public contracts are not systematically held to performance obligations; and growth has not yet been sufficiently converted into territorial inclusion, industrial jobs, equitable public services and impartial institutions.
Côte d'Ivoire is probably the country in this study that comes closest to a coalition of economic transformation. It nevertheless remains vulnerable to succession crises, which can turn an electoral deadline or the disappearance of a leader into a risk for the entire political order. Its main distance from the developmental model lies therefore less in its capacity to execute than in the insufficient institutionalisation of the compromise that sustains that capacity.
Nigeria: a coalition of sharing rather than a pact of transformation
Nigeria has potential without equal in West Africa: population, domestic market, hydrocarbons, entrepreneurs, universities, diaspora, cultural industries, financial services and technological capabilities. And yet the power of its elites has not produced a state able durably to coordinate these resources around a national project of economic transformation.
Since the end of the Biafra war, the political order has rested on a federal compromise of sharing. The distribution of oil revenues between the Federation, the states and local governments, the principle of federal character in appointments, the informal geographical rotation of power and multi-ethnic electoral coalitions limit the risk of any large region being permanently excluded. The 1999 transition, when the military accepted a return to civilian rule, is a significant expression of collective elite agency.
This pact has secured the continuity of the Federation and regular political competition. But it remains primarily an accord of coexistence and distribution. The oil rent serves to maintain balances among regions, governors, politicians, the military, senior civil servants and entrepreneurs tied to public procurement. It has less often been used to enforce a national productivity strategy.
The Nigerian elite is extraordinarily diverse. It includes competent administrations, innovative state governments, globalised entrepreneurs, an influential diaspora, banks, digital firms and a powerful cultural industry. But these islands of performance are not integrated by a sufficiently coherent state centre. Federalism encourages experimentation while dispersing responsibility. Oil reduces the need to negotiate a demanding fiscal contract with citizens. Insecurity and the proliferation of armed actors further reveal the limits of the monopoly on violence in several parts of the territory.
Nigeria is therefore not lacking in developmental elites. It probably has more of them, in absolute number, than any other country in the region. What it lacks is a coalition capable of making them dominant. Its elite bargain focuses on preserving the Federation and sharing the rent more than on electricity, productivity, human capital and massive job creation. Its distance from Botswana lies in its inability durably to subject the oil rent to a coherent fiscal and budgetary administration; its distance from East Asia lies in the absence of systematic discipline imposed on capital benefiting from public protection.
Mali: a political tradition without a durable productive coalition
Malian elites have regularly formulated ambitious projects. Modibo Keïta sought to build a sovereign, planning, socialist state. Moussa Traoré pursued stability before engaging in adjustment programmes. The democratic transition of the 1990s raised the hope that a pluralist compromise would consolidate the state. None of these configurations produced a durable pact of economic transformation.
Mali has a significant intellectual, administrative, trade-union and political tradition. It has, however, become locked into a low-productivity economy, dependent on cotton, gold, livestock, migrant remittances and aid. Landlockedness, the vast territory, weak infrastructure, demographic growth and regional disparities have raised the cost of state-building.
Under pluralist democracy, the pursuit of consensus gradually favoured a system in which parties, notables, traders, civil servants and local intermediaries took part in distributing positions and resources. The system produced some political pacification, but little collective discipline. Electoral competition was not matched by sufficient capacity to control the administration, deliver essential services or build an effective army.
The 2012 crisis revealed the exhaustion of this compromise. It cannot be explained solely by economics or institutions: the inability to transform agriculture, education, taxation, territorial administration and the productive apparatus reduced the resources available to the state to strengthen its legitimacy and confront threats.
The Malian elite thus appears more as an elite of political construction and intermediation than as a developmental elite. It has acquired experience in negotiating with external partners and in maintaining certain public services, but it has not built a sufficiently autonomous economic bureaucracy or a durable productive alliance with farmers and entrepreneurs.
The challenge is therefore not only to restore state authority. It is also to redefine the social and economic coalition on which state action might rest. In the absence of a rent as predictable as Botswana's and of an industrial base comparable to the Asian countries', Mali should seek its transformation pact in agricultural productivity, human capital, regional infrastructure and the expansion of local firms.
Burkina Faso: from political voluntarism to security primacy
Burkina Faso retains a distinctive memory of the developmental voluntarism associated with Thomas Sankara: national mobilisation, public integrity, social campaigns, women's emancipation and the search for autonomy. The experience was too short and too authoritarian to constitute an institutionalised pact, but it continues to feed the idea that a political elite can orient society towards a collective objective that transcends immediate interests.
Under Blaise Compaoré, a new equilibrium was organised around the presidency, the security forces, the administration, commercial networks and external partners. It provided a certain stability and favoured investment in gold and cotton, but rested on strong personalisation and patronage. The popular uprising of 2014 exposed its limits.
The democratic transition that followed did not have time to consolidate a new compromise. The rapid expansion of the jihadist insurgency shifted priorities and paved the way for the 2022 coups. The current ruling elite seeks its legitimacy in territorial reconquest, the affirmation of sovereignty and rupture with previous security partners.
It is therefore primarily an elite of security mobilisation and nationalist assertion. It could promote national production and economic autonomy, but the core of its political contract remains the military promise. War increases the weight of the army and armed civilian auxiliaries, absorbs public resources and shortens the policy horizon.
The distance from a developmental pact is, in these circumstances, considerable. A developmental state presupposes continuous investment, a protected administration, a long horizon and mechanisms for correcting policy. War, on the contrary, tends to favour urgency, centralisation and loyalty. Burkina Faso retains administrative, associative and entrepreneurial traditions that could support a future reconstruction, but they are currently subordinated to the logic of security survival.
Niger: an elite of intermediation turned sovereigntist military coalition
In Niger, the formation of an elite pact has long been hindered by regime instability, a weak fiscal base, the vast territory and dependence on aid. Military officers, senior civil servants, politicians, traders, traditional authorities and external partners have taken part in successive arrangements that allowed the state to function without deeply transforming its economy.
The 1991 National Conference opened a pluralist phase, but the coups of 1996, 1999 and 2010 showed that the military remained central arbiters. After 2011, the country had established some electoral continuity, strengthened parts of its administration and improved its relations with donors. Political competition, however, remained too personalised, poverty very high, and public investment heavily dependent on external resources.
The July 2023 coup replaced this arrangement with a military coalition that has become sovereigntist. As in Mali and Burkina Faso, its claimed legitimacy rests on the promise of restoring sovereignty and security and on the denunciation of the previous regional and international order. The expansion of oil production and the uranium rent could bring in more resources, but a larger rent does not in itself constitute a development pact. It can just as easily reinforce security spending, authoritarian centralisation and redistributive networks.
The current elite can therefore be described as a security elite that has rallied around "refoundation" without renouncing predation, and very distant from a developmental elite. Its rhetoric alludes to industrialisation and economic sovereignty, but no sufficiently broad coalition yet brings together administration, producers, entrepreneurs, local authorities and social organisations around credible long-term commitments.
The comparison with Botswana is illuminating. Both countries have mineral resources and vast territories, but Botswana consolidated very early rules for managing the rent and a relatively stable administration. Niger has experienced repeated institutional ruptures, far faster demographic growth and greater aid dependence. New revenues may open possibilities; they will translate into development only if they are subjected to rules that outlive individual leaders.
The AES: a regional security pact, not yet a development pact
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger now share a regional project built on the exaltation of sovereignty, whose expression sometimes takes the form of a "grotesque sovereignty" (in Michel Foucault's phrase), solidarity among military regimes and the priority given to fighting armed groups. The Alliance of Sahel States can thus be read as an attempt to extend the security pact beyond national borders.
This coalition displays greater ideological coherence than previous arrangements: critique of dependence, rejection of external injunctions, dramatisation of sovereignty and celebration of the armed forces. It finds support among those who believe that civilian regimes and international interventions have failed.
But a security pact only becomes developmental if it manages to restore security, rebuild an impartial administration, protect producers, mobilise domestic resources and invest durably in education, health, infrastructure and productivity. At this stage, the cost of war, the authoritarian concentration of power, the legal uncertainty it produces, the weakening of certain partnerships and the elimination of accountability mechanisms make the transition to a developmental pact difficult and frankly improbable. The risk is that sovereignty provides a new resource of legitimation without altering the structures of political economy. Military coalitions would then replace civilian ones in managing rents, without changing the fundamental relation between power, competence and development and while destroying the spaces of inclusiveness painfully created.
III. Which trajectories should we explore?
Asking "what is to be done?" in such a context carries a danger: that of turning a political-economy and historical analysis into a catalogue of technical prescriptions. The trajectories of East Asia or Botswana are neither directly reproducible nor necessarily desirable in all their dimensions. West African countries differ in their history, demography, resources, geographical position and the structure of their ruling coalitions.
It is nevertheless possible to sketch a few avenues of reflection. They constitute neither recipes nor a universal programme, but hypotheses to be examined in the light of each country's specific constraints.
1. Look for possible nuclei of a developmental coalition
A first avenue is to identify, within existing elites, groups whose interests might gradually converge around productive transformation. The point is not to wait for an entirely new ruling class to appear, nor to assume that elites will renounce their interests. It is to look for conditions under which they might conclude that growth, employment and stronger state capacity better serve their long-term security than immediate capture.
Historical experience suggests that a relatively narrow coalition can sometimes initiate this shift: political leaders with a sufficiently long horizon, competent economic administrations and entrepreneurs interested in production rather than in distribution alone. The question is then how to protect certain administrative spaces from purely partisan appointments, maintain the continuity of technical teams, and preserve essential economic bodies during political alternations or crises.
Ghana and Senegal offer institutional footholds but must deepen their productive discipline. Côte d'Ivoire has stronger execution capacity but must depersonalise it. Nigeria could build on certain sectoral coalitions or federated states. In the AES, the security priority makes this search harder without making it less necessary.
2. Change the nature of economic elites
A second avenue concerns the structure of economic interests. In several Sahelian countries, the most influential groups are concentrated in import-export, public procurement, trade, extractive activities or intermediation with donors. These activities may be necessary, but they do not always create the same incentives as productive agriculture, industry, local processing or competitive exports.
The question to explore is therefore the emergence of entrepreneurs with an interest in improving electricity, transport, skills, commercial justice and productivity. This evolution cannot be decreed. It depends on market size, access to finance, public procurement, trade policy and the state's ability to distinguish firms that invest from those that merely capture protection rents.
The Asian experience shows that public support can accelerate learning, but only when it is coupled with performance criteria and can be withdrawn in case of failure. Transposed to West Africa, this lesson invites less the wholesale abolition of rents than a serious inquiry into what is required of their beneficiaries in return: jobs, exports, investment, training, innovation or local value creation.
3. Turn constraints into incentives, without idealising crises
A third avenue bears on external constraints. Military threats, poverty and resource scarcity helped, in some Asian countries, to convince elites that their survival depended on the economic transformation of their country. It would nonetheless be dangerous to conclude that crises spontaneously produce development. In West Africa, conflicts and political ruptures have more often destroyed administrative capacity, shortened horizons and fostered emergency rents.
The Sahelian security crisis will only become a catalyst if leaders establish a link between security, agricultural productivity, public services, youth employment and territorial legitimacy. Otherwise, it will keep encouraging authoritarian centralisation, military spending and the selection of officials on the basis of loyalty.
Other constraints are emerging: aid retrenchment or reorientation, tightening migration policies, protectionism, the energy transition and the fragmentation of world markets. They could push countries to strengthen their fiscal and productive base. But they can also deepen poverty and isolation. Their effect will depend on how elites interpret them and the coalitions they build in response.
4. Move forward through verifiable capacity-building
Dercon urges us not to wait for perfect institutions before acting for development. The observation is apt, but it must not become a justification for authoritarianism. African history shows that suppressing political competition, far from automatically producing developmental discipline, has often fostered arbitrariness, personalisation of power and weakening of administrations.
A more prudent avenue would be to seek gradual, observable and cumulative advances: stability of technical teams; more competitive recruitment in certain administrations; transparency of public procurement; evaluation of supported firms; improved taxation; protection of some value chains; local-scale experimentation; and continuity of investment in human capital.
These reforms do not yet amount to a developmental pact. They can, however, create interests in favour of consolidating one. A working administration, an exporting firm or a local authority improving its services can become anchor points for a broader coalition.
5. Preserve political competition as a correction mechanism
Finally, the West African experience invites us not to oppose development and pluralism mechanically. Ghana and Senegal are the countries in which competition for power is the most institutionalised of the cases studied. They have not yet achieved a productive transformation comparable to East Asia's, but their political order offers possibilities for correction, team turnover and maintaining a horizon for the administrations.
Alternation guarantees neither competence nor budgetary discipline. It does, however, limit the risk that a leader's survival is confused with the state's. In fragile countries, this correction mechanism is particularly precious. The question is therefore not to choose between democracy and development, but to examine how sufficiently open political competition can coexist with continuity of productive policies and protection of technical institutions.
Conclusion
None of the countries considered reproduces the East Asian model, and none fully matches Botswana. Côte d'Ivoire approaches it through its capacity for economic mobilisation, Ghana through the credibility of its political rules, Senegal through its civilian and administrative tradition, and Nigeria through the strength of its entrepreneurs and human resources. Each, however, possesses only part of the arrangement.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are today far removed. Their dominant coalitions are absorbed by security, sovereignty and state survival. Yet restoring authority will not be enough. Without productivity, without human capital, without competent administration and without a coalition bringing together producers and entrepreneurs, territorial reconquest itself will remain fragile.
The main lesson is perhaps that development depends neither on the moral quality of leaders alone nor on an ideal institutional architecture. It requires that sufficiently powerful groups have an interest in raising productivity and accept subjecting part of their rents to collective objectives. The task is therefore not only to replace elites, but to change the conditions in which they calculate their interests.
To date, the Ghanaian and Senegalese compromises offer the most favourable political bases for such an evolution; Côte d'Ivoire has the economic capacity closest to a coalition of transformation; and Nigeria holds the largest reservoir of productive elites. In the AES, the challenge is more radical: sovereignty and security must be prevented from becoming self-sufficient ends and must be subordinated to the imperative of development, understood as the reduction of mass poverty.
The developmental elite pact cannot be imported or decreed. It can only emerge from an evolution of interests, constraints and power balances. That is why the avenues proposed here should be read as questions to deepen rather than as ready-made solutions: which groups have an interest in transformation? Which institutions can be protected? Which rents can be made productive? And how can we preserve a political space in which errors can be recognised and corrected?
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