Togo: Thorny transition and misguided aid at the roots of economic misery

The parliamentary elections of October 2007, the first free Togolese elections since decades, were meant to correct at least partially the rigged presidential elections of 2005. Western donors considered it as a litmus test of despotic African regimes’ propensity to change towards democratization and economic prosperity. They took Togo as model to test their approach of political conditionality of aid, which had been emphasised also as corner stone of the joint EU-Africa strategy. Empirical findings on the linkage between democratization and economic performance are challenged in this paper because of its basic data deficiencies. It is open to question, whether Togo’s expected economic consolidation and growth will be due to democratization of its institutions or to the improved external environment, notably the growing competition between global players for African natural resources

Where does fortune come from? Agrarian work ethics and luck in Togo

Through the analysis of the biographical trajectories of three Togolese men of different generations, this paper explores the changing and ambiguous relation between notions of fortune and agricultural work in south-western Togo. Comparing their different work ethics, I will discuss which factors people of different generations and different economic conditions considered legitimate in enhancing individual success and fortune, the ambiguous moral discourses that historically have imbued agricultural activities, and their relations with other forms of accumulation more or less connected with the use or abuse of occult means. I would suggest that, far from being one the opposite of the other, work ethics and notions of fortune become part of the same moral discourse that people elaborate in order to legitimize (or delegitimize) given forms of accumulation and to make sense of new and old inequalities