Blog: At the regional summit

‘Did you see him?’
‘Look – she’s just walking behind those bodyguards…isn’t that…?
‘Ah, can’t remember his name now but wasn’t he a minister for…?
 
It’s people-spotting time at the Meridian, now under new ownership. Bigger than a major airport hangar, you can easily park half a dozen world conferences here and still have room to spare.
 
Quick! Camera! Click – click - click! It’s Ivorian president Allasane Ouattara, currently also the head of the West African group ECOWAS. He’s looking relaxed, walking from one conference room to another, talking with one of his aides.
 
Ouattara and his colleagues are here to discuss the future of two of their fellows. One, Mali, recently lost its way. There was an armed rebellion that caught the government napping and then a coup d’état that overthrew said government. Now it’s a failed democracy, physically cut in half and run by recalcitrant soldiers.
 
Look, there they go, between the chairs and the tax free shops, the uniformed men of Mali who just strangled their young democracy to death. Click – click – click! ‘We’ve been far too soft on them,’ one journalist scoffs.
 
Senegal is back
Swivel! Turn! Camera! Click – click – click. Striding through the hall, looking regal, as always, it’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s president.
 
Look there! Wow! He’s seriously smartly dressed. Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria sails past in his trademark suit and hat. Click - click – click. No sign yet of just-elected and high-flying Senegalese president Macky Sall but there’s no mistaking the sentiment behind this event: Senegal is back. Back on the world map and what’s more: the world takes us seriously again.
 
‘Look there! There! Isn’t that….?’ Ah, Missed him. No clicks.
 
But we’re here to discuss problems, right? So we had a crack at Mali. Problem number two is called Guinea Bissau and this country has not so much as lost its way – it never found it. In the 1970s it fought against disastrous Portuguese colonial rule and since Independence it’s been run by (1) a bloated political party or (2) a bloated army. Guinea Bissau also found itself overrun by an alphabet soup of development agencies but they have made way for more lucrative business: money from Latin American cocaine barons.
 
Now the soldiers are in charge again; they are also the main partners-in-trade of the cocaine barons. At the Meridian conference, this was the easy one: agree on a transition period with an interim president and fix an election date. Then wait for the next coup. Mali will take more time and patience and diplomacy and resources to sort out.
 
Trouble in sex tourism paradise
No, I did not wait for the press conference. But before I left I witnessed a tornado. Scores of suits equipped with those little earpieces suddenly stormed through the animated foyer. Conversation stopped. What on earth was that? And who for?
 
What??? All this fuss for the head of the smallest nation in the meeting? ‘Yeah, he’s paranoid,’ came one dry comment. I guess that’s what happens if you’re running a sex tourism paradise, a gun running operation, a money laundering machine and a drugs smuggling business. Oh and a police state. I’d be worried too. Not to mention tired.
 
Next morning, I saw an unusually large number of planes leaving Dakar’s airport. Clearly, few visitors had passed up the chance for an extra night in West Africa’s best city…