Togolese Prime Minister Komlan Mally has resigned less than a year after taking office following the small West African country’s first multiparty election in 13 years, state television said.
No reason was given for his departure. A presidential spokesperson said a new head of government will be appointed.
Mally, a member of President Faure Gnassingbe’s Rally of the Togolese People party (RPT), became premier in December.
His resignation may clear the way for Gnassingbe to reshuffle his ministers and appoint a new team ahead of a 2010 presidential poll in which he is expected to stand for re-election, observers said.
Togo, a former French colony, is the world’s fourth-largest phosphate producer and exports coffee, cocoa and cotton.
”The president of the republic has accepted the resignation of Komlan Mally,” state television said late on Friday.
The European Union, Togo’s biggest donor, resumed full economic cooperation late last year, citing the success of multiparty elections held in October 2007.
The bloc had frozen most aid in 1993 because of what it considered a poor democratic record, including decades of authoritarian rule and periods of bloody unrest since independence in 1960.
”The main aim of the government was to renew links with the international community. That objective has now been achieved,” a spokesperson for the president said during Friday’s broadcast.
Once among West Africa’s most prosperous states, Togo depends heavily on both commercial and subsistence agriculture, which provides employment for 65% of the workforce.
Some basic foodstuffs must still be imported.
Cocoa, coffee and cotton generate about 40% of export earnings with cotton the most important cash crop. — Reuters