Togo 2014
Yearbook 2014
Togo. Togo population in 2020 is estimated at 8,278,735. Tensions rose at the end of the year ahead of the presidential election, which is expected in April 2015. Several demonstrations that gathered thousands of people were held in the capital Lomé. The requirement was that President Faure Gnassingbé should not be allowed to run for a third term. Gnassingbé – whose father ruled the country for 38 years – had not announced his plans. However, he said he would safeguard the current constitution which would not hinder his candidacy.
In November, security forces used rubber bullets and tear gas as protesters tried to make their way to Parliament. In June, Parliament had rejected proposals to amend the Constitution.
According to topb2bwebsites, some candidates had come forward. One was Jean-Pierre Fabre, leader of the opposition party ANC (National Alliance for Change), supported by a loose alliance. He also ran in 2010.
In November, the West African cooperation organization ECOWAS appointed Gnassingbé to coordinate the fight against the Ebola epidemic in the region.
HUMAN AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY
West African state. At the last official census (1981) the population was equal to 2,703,250 residents, but, given the high annual growth rate, an estimate of 2006 had more than doubled: the scarce economic resources of the country, however, do not they are able to cope with this growth and GDP per capita in 2004 was less than $ 380. The percentage of the population under 15 years of age is very high (43 %), but, in the impossibility of allocating investments to the education sector, there is widespread illiteracy (about half of the entire population). The political crisis that opened in 2005, after the death of President Gnassingbé Eyadéma, led to violence between opposing factions, which prompted more than 20,000 Togolese to seek refuge in Ghana (see below: History).
The capital, Lomé, has the largest deep-sea port on the West African coast, which has become, after the war that devastated the Ivory Coast, a crucial node in the import-export movement in the region: the traffic of goods has grown considerably, the free zones located in the immediate hinterland appear to be more and more dynamic and an informal economy is also showing strong expansion.
Among the productive activities, agriculture maintains the primacy of employment; over two thirds of the workforce work in the primary sector, which is able to cover the internal food needs and allows for the allocation of considerable quantities for export (cocoa and cotton ensure 28 % of the total income from foreign trade). The country’s second resource are natural phosphates (1,120,000 t in 2005), the extraction process of which has benefited from investments that have made it possible to increase its capacities. Togo is deprived of energy resources and is therefore forced to import petroleum products; the increase in the prices of the latter on international markets had a very heavy impact on the trade balance. Finally, the development of some processing industries has led to an increase in imports of capital goods.
