Benin: under Romuald Wadagni, down with normo-communication?

When Patrice Talon came to power in April 2016 under the banner of “Rupture,” he brought with him a governance philosophy that was deliberately discreet. His media communication officer, Edouard Loko, names it plainly: normo-communication. This strategy aims for a middle ground, theoretically equidistant between the hyper-communication of previous regimes, which prioritized visibility at all costs, and hypo-communication, synonymous with total opacity.

In 2017, Roland Riboux, president of the Council of Private Investors of Benin (CIPB), provided a diagnosis that was both benevolent and concerning in the columns of Jeune Afrique. After the “hyper-communication” of President Boni Yayi, the “normo-communication” of Patrice Talon had, he said, “surprised everyone.” The systematic absence of press conferences from ministers avoided cacophony but deprived the government of the opportunity to convey a clear message. Riboux even suggested recruiting “a communication agency led by a great professional familiar with Benin and West Africa.”

In practice, within the first few weeks, this “norm” resembled almost total silence. There was only one official information channel, the Wednesday press briefing conducted by the Minister of State Secretary General to the Presidency, Pascal Iréné Koupaki, responsible for reading the minutes of the Cabinet meeting. A role that researcher Bellarminus Kakpovi describes as “lapidary”: “It feels like being in a convent where no information filters through.” The former publisher of the Nouvelle Tribune, Vincent Folly, spoke of a true embargo on official information.

The consequences are immediate: departmental directors, agency heads, and state company officials hide in silence, fearing administrative sanctions for unauthorized speech. Falsehoods proliferate. Disinformation settles into public debate, lacking credible and accessible official information.

The Recognized Disaster: Theoretically Liberated Speech in 2018

Barely two years after the establishment of this doctrine, the government itself acknowledges its failure. In June 2018, Edouard Loko summons departmental directors and heads of state structures to convey a presidential instruction: “Speech is now free. You are obligated to communicate about your respective actions.” The president’s special advisor admits that this widespread self-censorship has harmed the regime, fueled false information, and deprived citizens of credible information.

However, this declared shift remains largely theoretical. The “freed speech” “in principle” does not translate into a real opening of government behind-the-scenes. Communication remains hyper-filtered, centralized, and dependent on an implicit state visa that few dare to disregard. Contrary to his usual practices, it happens that Talon allows himself occasional outings (year-end reports, exceptional press conferences) but these breaches of normo-communication remain notable events, commented as such by the press.

Under pressure from criticism, the Talon government began from 2021-2022 to multiply catch-up mechanisms. Three mechanisms are deployed to reconnect, at least visibly, with a minimum of transparency.

AskGouv, first. This digital platform overseen by Stévy Wallace, then in charge of the digital communication service at the presidency and accessible at ask.gouv.bj, allows any citizen to ask questions to public officials during thematic online sessions. The spokesperson for the republican police, interim directors general, and sectoral executives successively participate, in a format that simulates proximity without necessarily addressing sensitive issues.

Wilfried Léandre Houngbédji, next. Appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the government and spokesperson in 2021, this former political journalist and ex-communications director of the presidency inaugurates an unprecedented format: weekly exchange sessions with the press, held in rotation at the newsrooms – 24h au Bénin, Benin Web TV, La Nation, online media. Each week, he visits a different newsroom, answers questions, and interprets government news. It’s a notable formal advancement. But journalists also complain: the spokesperson remains a filter, an intermediary, rarely a source of revelation.

Post-Cabinet meeting questions, finally. After the reading of the minutes of the Wednesday council, the journalists present are now invited to ask their questions. A ritual that has become regular, offering a space for direct dialogue, even if the answers remain constrained by the demands of government communication.

These three patches constitute a real improvement over the deafening silence of the first years. However, they are not enough to erase the original sin: a decade of decline in press freedom, documented by RSF, which places Benin 35 places lower in the world rankings than when Talon took office in 2016.

These initiatives have thus produced a visible effect on the government’s media presence. However, they have not changed the central principle that it is the executive that sets the framework, the timing, and the interlocutors. AskGouv selects the questions. The newsroom rotations are managed by the spokesperson. The questions after the Council of Ministers focus on the points read – rarely on what has not been said. The filter did not disappear; it simply moved, from information retention to controlling its staging.

It is precisely this architecture – abundant communication but framed from the outside – that Wadagni disrupts by going directly to Facebook to announce himself, in his own words, a Cabinet decision before the official report is published. The sequence reverses that of Talon: no longer “the state decides then communicates what it chooses to communicate, in the format it chooses,” but “the president himself states what he has decided, in his own voice, on his own channel.”

Facebook as a Presidential Channel

The most striking aspect of Wadagni’s communication in his first ten days in office is how he announced the key measure from his first Cabinet meeting on June 3. Even before the official report was published by the Secretary General of the government, the Beninese president himself posted, on his personal Facebook page, the announcement of the allocation of one billion FCFA to public hospitals for the treatment of vital emergencies without payment conditions. He wrote it in the first person, in a decidedly personal register: “When a vital emergency occurs, every minute counts. Yet, too many families have already experienced the anxiety of having to look for money at the very moment when a life needs saving. This situation can no longer be a fate.”

This is not a press release. It’s a declaration from a politician speaking directly to his fellow citizens, without institutional intermediaries, in the language of shared emotion. The form is radically different from ten years of Beninese government communication, during which Cabinet decisions reached the public in the form of lists of adopted points, without narrative staging.

This style is not improvised. On March 21, 2026, during the presentation of his societal project at the Palais des Congrès, Wadagni staged a deliberate break. No podium, no written speech, no visible teleprompter. A man standing, in a blazer, speaking for thirty minutes in a format borrowed from TED Talks, using direct language with concrete examples. He had told investors, diplomats, and journalists present what he had just done on Facebook in June: describe the reality of Benin in terms that Beninese people recognize, not in terms that the administration produces.

The promotion of Wilfried Léandre Houngbédji to minister spokesperson for the government – a role elevated to a ministerial status unprecedented under the Beninese Republic – confirms that communication is no longer a subordinate function in the Wadagni architecture. It is integrated into the governmental structure with the same formal weight as a sectoral minister. The recreation of the Ministry of Communication and Media, eliminated by Talon in 2021, goes in the same direction: state communication deserves dedicated leadership, not a sub-function inherited from a merged portfolio.

Can Wadagni Maintain the Pace?

The communicational rupture is real. It also carries risks that the early days of the mandate do not yet reveal. Communicating a lot offers opponents and journalists material to respond, contradict, and demand clarifications. Talon’s normo-communication at least had this defensive virtue: what is not said cannot be cited against oneself.

The question is not whether the new style is better or worse. It’s whether the communication system that Wadagni is building – more personal, more direct, more digital – is equipped to absorb the crises that presidential communication must also manage, the moments when silence protects, when words oblige, and where improvisation can be costly.

For now, the first ten days argue in his favor. The future will tell if the style holds when reality resists.

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