 My name is Jide Okeke, and I'm the coordinator of the United Nations Development Programme Regional Programme for Africa based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I'm here today at the United States Institute for Peace to share some findings that emerged from a recent report commissioned by UNDP on soldiers and citizens, the need for democratic renewal in Africa. Let me share three important findings that emerged from this report. The first is quite reassuring. We continue to see that democracy is quite popular on the African continent, and I think democracy offers us the opportunity to choose our leaders. That's the only political system that offers us the opportunity. However, it appears from the evidence we have from citizens that there is a mismatch between democratic processes and democratic outcomes, and this is very much revealed in the responses of citizens in our report. The second finding, which is very important to emphasize, is that we see that where there is a protracted evidence of military governance over time, there is a likelihood of cool risk. What do I mean by this? In some of the countries, if you just do a simple summation of the years of independence of countries that have recently experienced coups in Africa, especially in Egypt, Burkina Faso, Mali, and to some extent Guinea, they have a total years of independence of over 310 years. Out of that, they have experienced in total years of military rule of over 200 years. So we begin to see that there is a political culture in some of these countries that makes coup and military rule a likely alternative when there is this widespread evidence or perception that there is an abuse of democracy. The third point, which I think is important to note, is what I call a security paradox, and this is very much revealed in our report. We see that the areas where we have seen coups emerge on the African continent, with the exception, of course, of Gabon and Sudan to some extent, are regions where we have seen protracted insecurity over the last, at least one year. And despite the prolonged insecurity, we've also seen investment through military interventions in these countries. So we are seeing that military, extensive military or security investment, hard security investment, is not translating in the improvement of the security environment in those regions. Therefore, I think it's time for us to begin to reset how we think about improving security in this region. Where there is protracted insecurity, where you find that there is protracted corruption, there is protracted level of under economic performance, you also find that there are risk in varying forms, which makes different sort of vulnerabilities likely, and that could be in the form of course. So this is not to say that there is a causal relationship between under development and coup risk, but where you see protracted level of economic underperformance, it leads to different forms of vulnerabilities. And depending on the specificity of that country, you could see the likelihood of coups. I think for the last 20 years, the African Union regional economic communities have spent a lot of political capital in trying to ensure the adoption of the African Charter on Elections, Democracy and Governance on the African Constitutive Act, the African Governance Architecture, the African Peace and Security Architecture. But I think it's time for us to go beyond non-setting and begin to think about implementation. And this is why within the African context, we've partnered with the African Union Commission to establish what we've referred to as the Africa Facility to Support Inclusive Transitions, where we are working with the EU and other regional partners to support transition processes, mechanisms and institutions in ways that can help to restore constitutional order in some of these countries. And I think this is really important. It's a first step. It's a way of thinking innovatively and constructively about how we support transition context without necessarily just simply imposing sanctions on these countries. Let's not forget, we need to promote governance, but at the same time we also need to safeguard development in some of these countries where coups have occurred.