A study by two US researchers, Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne, has identified over 200 coup attempts in Africa since the 1950s and about half of these have been successful.
Ousters of presidents through coup d’états in Africa were a long-running trend between 1960 and 2000, the overall number of coups and coup attempts stood at an average of four per year but faded over the years.

But now they are slow dancing their way back to the fore after the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s, which ousted many despots. The Burkinabe coup was supported by hundreds of people and some of them set fire to the ruling party’s headquarters.

“This is not surprising, given the instability African countries experienced in the years after independence and coup leaders almost invariably deny their action was a coup in an effort to appear legitimate,” says Jonathan Powell.

In September 2021, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres voiced concern that “military coups are back,” and blamed a lack of unity amongst the international community in response to military interventions. “Geo-political divisions are undermining international co-operation and a sense of impunity is taking hold,” he said.

Guinea-Bissau’s president Umaro Sissoco Embalo survived an attempted coup on February 3 but said many members of the security forces had been killed repelling an attack on democracy that may have been linked to drug trafficking.

The fast-moving events in the former Portuguese colony on the West African coast came just over a week after the military in Burkina Faso, another country in the region, deposed the president there.

Past African successful coups

Burkina Faso joined a list of countries that have recently experienced military takeovers most plagued by insecurity, poor governance and frustrated youth. But there’s no one-size-fits-all explanation. In the past 18 months, in similar scenes, military leaders have toppled the governments of Mali, Chad, Guinea and Sudan.  

Mali and Sudan

In Mali and Sudan, military leaders used similar tactics to capture power. The Malian putschists led by Colonel Assimi Goita initially agreed to form a military-civilian mixed transitional council following the first coup in August 2020, promising to hand over power to civilian rule at the end of the transition.

But last May, Goita imprisoned and then removed the civilian president and prime minister of the transitional council, following a cabinet reshuffle that saw two military members replaced with civilian politicians. Meanwhile, the military’s promise to hold elections by February is increasingly looking unlikely to materialize.

Sudan’s General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan seized power on October 25 and detained Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok with whom he initially agreed to run the country. Although nationwide protests and Western condemnation forced him to reinstate Hamdok, the military remains the main actor in Sudan’s fragile politics.

Chad

Chad’s army took power in April 2021 after President Idriss Deby was killed while visiting Chadian troops fighting rebels in the north. Under Chadian law, the speaker of parliament should have become president. But a military council stepped in and dissolved parliament in the name of ensuring stability.

Deby’s son, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, was named interim president and tasked with overseeing an 18-month transition to elections.

Guinea

Special Forces commander Colonel Mamady Doumbouya led a coup in September 2021 against President Alpha Conde; the Guinean coup took place after widespread dissatisfaction and protests against Conde’s largely unpopular move to scrap the presidential two-term limit. Hence, Colonel Doumbouya justified the power grab by claiming poverty and endemic corruption compelled his special forces to intervene.

In the second part of the 20th century, military coups in Africa were used as a common means of changing the political order in the wake of decolonization. Between 1960 and 2000, the overall number of coups and coup attempts stood at an average of four per year, according to a study by Jonathan Powell, an associate professor at the University of Central Florida, and Clayton Thyne, a professor at the University of Kentucky.

The recent surge in the militarization of politics, analysts say, is influenced by a mix of external drivers, including the increasing and diverse number of international actors who are active in the continent prioritizing their interests, and internal factors, such as widespread public frustration against corruption, insecurity and poor governance.

The African Union (AU) and the regional bodies such as the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS in West Africa suspended the countries where coups had taken place except Chad in a bid to force military rulers to negotiate with civilian leaders. But such moves have had limited effect.

ECOWAS chairman Nana Akufo-Addo said at the opening of the summit that a coup in Mali had been “contagious” and had led to subsequent military takeovers in the region; the trend “must be contained before it devastates our whole region and this summit will focus on the emerging threats in our region that stem from the military’s interference in Mali and its contagious influence in Guinea and Burkina Faso,” he said.

ECOWAS representatives imposed sanctions on Burkina Faso and on all other countries that suffered coups. The African Union (AU) also suspended Burkina Faso from its Peace and Security Council.

France24 also reported that the bloc has slapped sanctions on Mali and Guinea for failing to restore civilian rule after military takeovers. Additional measures have included the closure of borders by ECOWAS members, an embargo on trade and financial transactions as well as targeted sanctions against individuals.

Powell said the lack of concrete and unified international condemnation and the growing number of international actors, who have shown willingness to work with the military governments, encourage more unconstitutional power grabs by military officials who know they will not face severe consequences or regional and global isolation.

China, the continent’s largest trading partner, has a no-interference policy on the domestic affairs of African countries, as long as they are committed to long-term economic ties. This is seen favourably by many across the continent, with more African leaders wooed by China’s economic success on the global stage becoming increasingly convinced their countries should leave Western prescriptions for good governance and economic growth.

Russia, on the other hand, had been expanding its influence politically and militarily across the continent. Moscow has been stretching its muscles by backing putschist leaders like Mali’s Goita and Sudan’s al-Burhan and running online disinformation campaigns to spread a positive image of the Kremlin and capitalise on rising anti-French sentiments in Francophone Africa.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group has reportedly deployed mercenaries in conflict-ridden countries including the Central African Republic, Mali and Libya. The Russian government denies any links to the shadowy private security company.

“For Russia and China, the relationship is the priority, not an interest in democracy,” Powell said. “As they increase their influence, it has begun to mimic the Cold War, when a loss of support from the West didn’t alarm potential coup plotters because they could quickly win support from the Soviet Union.”

A similar trend was followed with the 2017 Zimbabwean coup that ended the 40-year rule of Robert Mugabe who was forced to resign by the military. Happy to see Mugabe go, the USA and European countries ignored that his resignation had come through the barrel of a gun.

Meanwhile, France, whose engagement with African countries has overwhelmingly been based on military and security, continues to pursue its traditional strongman-favouring strategy.
President Emmanuel Macron endorsed the Chadian coup and called late president Idriss Deby, who led 30 years of repressive rule, a “loyal and courageous friend.’’

The Arab Spring uprisings

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in response to corruption and economic stagnation and was influenced by the Tunisian Revolution, and from Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain, where either the ruler was deposed (Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Ali Abdullah Saleh) or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, or insurgencies.

Sustained street demonstrations took place in Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Iranian Khuzestan,] Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. A major slogan of the demonstrators in the Arab world is ash-shaʻb yurīd isqāṭ an-niẓām! (The people want to bring down the regime).

The importance of external factors versus internal factors to the protests’ spread and success is contested. Social media is one way governments try to inhibit protests. In many countries, governments shut down certain sites or blocked Internet service entirely, especially in the times preceding a major rally. Governments also accused content creators of unrelated crimes or shutting down communication on specific sites or groups, such as Facebook.

In the news, social media has been heralded as the driving force behind the swift spread of revolution throughout the world, as new protests appear in response to success stories shared from those taking place in other countries.

The wave of initial revolutions and protests faded by mid-2012, as many Arab Spring demonstrations were met with violent responses from authorities, as well as from pro-government militias, counter-demonstrators, and militaries.

These attacks were answered with violence from protesters in some cases large-scale conflicts resulted: the Syrian civil war, the rise of ISIL, insurgency in Iraq and the following civil war; the Egyptian crisis, coup, and subsequent unrest and insurgency the Libyan civil war; and the Yemeni crisis and following civil war. Regimes that lacked major oil wealth and hereditary succession arrangements were more likely to undergo regime change

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