Benin - Growing Pains for a Young Democracy

Despite political and economic gains since the 1990s, Benin may be more fragile than it appears on the surface. Corruption continues to pervade many aspects of society, and the revelation of the Ponzi scheme swindle only built on opposition allegations that the Yayi administration is involved in further dirty dealings, such as vote rigging and fraud. Regardless of the merit of these particular claims, Benin does not score particularly high on the World Bank's governance indicator scale. While the country enjoys significant freedom of the press, it ranks surprisingly low on measures of government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption-indicators that have remained more or less stagnant over the last 15 years...[continue reading]