Africa Media Watch

There has been much hand-wringing in the African media this week over the military uprising in Ivory Coast and the implications for the continent as a whole.

The official Ivorian media reacted indignantly to suggestions that the uprising was deliberately engineered to enable President Laurent Gbagbo to settle old scores.

It took particular exception to an article in the French paper Liberation that concluded there was "neither a mutiny nor a coup d'etat in Ivory Coast".

The mouthpiece of Ivory Coast's ruling party, the daily paper Notre Voie, carried a piece by an adviser to President Gbagbo, Alain Toussaint, in which the Liberation article was described as "a crude set-up dictated by ill-intentioned informers".

President Gbagbo's democratic credentials have been questioned

Mr Toussaint said that the writer of the Liberation article had "fallen victim to a vast manipulation".

He said that allegations such as those put forward by Liberation were intended to destabilise the country still further.

"The final aim of this monstrous machination... seems to be to plunge Ivory Coast into war...

"Ivory Coast has truly fallen victim to a coalition of national and foreign interests that wants to prevent it from mastering its destiny," Mr Toussaint concluded.

Doubts raised

Whether or not they believed the uprising to be a genuine coup attempt, most papers outside the country agreed that the episode did not augur well for the future of African democracy.

"Events in the Ivory Coast since last Thursday should be a matter of grave concern to everyone interested in the development of democracy, peace and stability in Africa in general and the West Africa sub-region in particular," Ghana's Daily Graphic said.

Africa has a very damaging stereotype tag

Daily Graphic, Ghana

The circumstances surrounding the death of the former Ivorian military leader, General Robert Guei, as well as the burning down of the house of opposition leader Alassane Ouattara - who sought refuge in the French embassy in Abidjan when the disturbances began - prompted a number of questions, the paper thought.

These events, it said, inevitably gave rise to suspicions that the country's leadership was using the uprising as an excuse to rid itself of dissenting voices.

"Our concern is based on the tendency for African politicians to see opposition personalities as enemies, who are to be eliminated instead of regarding them as a group who constitutes a political alternative to tolerate."

Bad press

The paper warned that the disturbances in Ivory Coast would only serve to reinforce the negative image too often projected by Africa to the rest of the world.

Even a country which has enjoyed peace and harmony for decades can easily slide into chaos

The Guardian, Tanzania

"Africa has a very damaging stereotype tag which it is now struggling to shed. The average European or American perceives Africa as a continent of savage internal conflicts, incipient dictatorships, a hoard of corrupt leaders, abject poverty and hunger," it said.

Another Ghanaian paper, The Chronicle, was worried that the unrest might spread to other members of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).

"A spill-over of the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire could easily trigger off coups in almost all the Ecowas areas," it wrote.

"Apart from toppling the sovereign governments in place, such a mishap could slide the sub-region into further economic, social and political woes that might blow up every hope of catching up with the civilized nations."

Questionable motives

The Tanzanian Guardian, like the Ghanaian Daily Graphic, saw events in Ivory Coast as containing "a lesson for the whole of Africa".

The West African region remains a coup-infested area of Africa

Standard Times, Sierra Leone

"This particular case has taught us that even a country which has enjoyed peace and harmony for decades can easily slide into chaos if members of the ruling clique are constantly motivated by rivalry and are just there to out-manipulate and out-politic each other for the sake of getting hold of the national treasury."

Sierra Leone's Standard Times warned that the Ivory Coast unrest offered "a dangerous signal to all peace-loving and democratic people in this West African region, and indeed, in Africa as a whole".

"The coup in Ivory Coast is a potent reminder that... the West African region remains a coup-infested area of Africa that requires the urgent attention of the international community, to discourage armies from taking the law in their hands," it said.

Gun culture

Kenya's Daily Nation also called for international intervention to prevent the situation from deteriorating further.

Once the politics of the gun takes root in a country, it takes extraordinarily skilled leadership to get rid of it

The Monitor, Uganda

"It is time for the newly-formed African Union to move in fast, as a massacre of Muslim northerners cannot be ruled out.

"Failure to act will mean that Cote d'Ivoire will soon join the camp of Africa's failed or crumbling nations," the paper warned.

The Ugandan Monitor sounded an equally sombre note.

"Once the politics of the gun takes root in a country, it takes extraordinarily skilled leadership to get rid of it... and Africa is very short of such leaders," it said.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.