In January 1989, students marched out of classes at the national university in Cotonou, the capital city of the West African country of Bénin. They demanded that the government immediately disburse long-delayed scholarships and restore guarantees of public sector employment for university graduates. By July, civil servants and schoolteachers also took to the streets with threats of a general strike to protest having gone without salaries for months.

The government of Benin could not respond to these demands because it was bankrupt. Tax revenues had been slumping for years, capital flight was increasing, and top public officials were embroiled in embarrassing financial scandals. Unhappy with the government's failure to put into effect an economic austerity program, foreign donors withheld disbursements of the budgetary support that was keeping the government afloat. In response to this economic quandary and to the mass street protests, Bénin's military-installed president Mathieu Kérékou began to make political concessions. In August 1989, he invited a prominent human rights activist and legal reformer into the Cabinet; in September, he announced a broad amnesty for political exiles and released some 200 political prisoners.

The protesters were not assuaged, however, escalating their demands to include an end to the ill treatment of political detainees and a clampdown on corruption. Endeavoring to recapture the political initiative, Kérékou surprised his compatriots with a landmark announcement on December 5, 1989, that the People's Revolutionary Party of Bénin (PRPB) would abandon both its ideological commitment to Marxism–Leninism and its monopolistic grip on political affairs.