Introduction
Since 2020, the African continent has witnessed a series of nine ‘successful’1 military coups, reviving painful memories dating back to the single-party era. For many analysts and the media, this development marks the ‘return of coups in Africa’ and implies a ‘retreat’ from ‘democracy’. The Economist (2023) even speculated that ‘at this rate there will be more of them in the 2020s than in any decade since the 1960s’, the decade with the highest number of recorded putsches. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres has spoken of an ‘epidemic of putsches’ (UN 2021), suggesting that the recent military coups are a kind of new contagious disease that is blindly striking African states with no immunity. ‘Military governments are not the solution. They aggravate problems. They cannot resolve a crisis; they can only make it worse’, argued Guterres in 2023 in the wake of new putsches, before encouraging ‘all countries to move quickly to establish credible democratic institutions and the rule of law’ (UN 2023).
This narrative of a ‘return of coups’ and a ‘democracy backslide’ in Africa is flawed insofar as it is based on data that are both superficial and devoid of historical contextualisation. It wrongly assumes: (i) that there is a growing trend towards military putsches; (ii) that these coups affect different parts of the continent indiscriminately; (iii) that they are mostly due to causes internal to African countries; and (iv) that these unconstitutional changes are events that hinder ‘democracy’ in the countries where they occurred.
This article will show that the putsches since 2020 have mainly concerned its French-speaking part, as more and more analysts realised after the coups in Niger (July 2023) and Gabon (August 2023). Although their immediate causes have differed, I argue that the coups signal first and foremost the crisis of French imperialism in Africa. This politically very significant development has been lost on many because of the prevalence of very broad explanations in terms of ‘bad governance’, ‘authoritarian drift’, poor economic performances, and so on.
Since the independences at the turn of the 1960s, France has arrogated to itself an ‘imperial suffrage’, the right to intervene in the internal affairs of its ex-colonies, including the choice of their leaders, regardless of what African people want and wish to express through universal suffrage elections. Throughout this period, the former metropole worked to install and protect heads of state loyal to it and to overthrow or seek to destabilise those it could not control (Pigeaud and Sylla 2024a). In recent years, France has been unable to maintain order within its neo-colonial empire in the face of the revolt of the African peoples, which has precipitated, in some countries, the arrival in power, within a short span, of military leaders determined to free themselves from the grip of Paris. Previously, French neo-colonialism, commonly referred to as Françafrique (Borrel et al. 2021; Medushevskiy and Shishkina 2022), had faced isolated challenges from nationalist or pan-Africanist leaders. Historically speaking, however, this is the first time that Paris has been confronted by the collective and sustained resistance of united African leaders with relatively strong popular support.
This article also argues that recent coups in former French colonies differ from those of previous decades just as much as they differ from each other in terms of liberation aspirations. They have been bloodless and very popular, at least at the outset, precisely because they appeared to be a solution to political impasse. Instead of an expression of democratic ‘backsliding’, they should be viewed as a symptom, or even the result, of the increasing gulf between popular demands and the responses of rulers in ‘democratic’ regimes where ‘democracy’ is seen as compatible with the acceptance of a neo-colonial status. While some coups helped to breathe new life into the neo-colonial framework, others aimed to put an end to it.
The French-speaking African countries referred to in this article are the 16 belonging to the ‘historical franc zone’. These are the countries that still use or once used the CFA franc, the colonial currency created in 1945 and which is still under the legal tutelage of the French Treasury (Pigeaud and Sylla 2021). These include nine countries in West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo), five in Central Africa (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Gabon and Republic of the Congo) and two in the Indian Ocean (Madagascar and Comoros). The statistics on coups quoted here are taken from the Cline Center’s Coup d’État Project (Cline Center for Advanced Social Research 2024; Peyton et al. 2024). Data on the leaders of the 16 countries of the historical franc zone (their number, civilian or military status, age, age of coming to power, etc.) have been compiled based on online resources (see Tables 6 and 7 ).
This article begins by recalling the singularity of the decolonisation process in French-speaking Africa and France’s permanent assertion of its imperial suffrage in the post-independence period. It then highlights that the revolt of the African peoples, particularly the youth, plunged French imperialism into a period of crisis, revealed in particular by the coups perpetrated by leaders hostile to Françafrique. After a brief discussion of the limitations of the literature on coups in Africa, I explain why the countries of the historical franc zone are the continent’s champions when it comes to military putsches. I analyse the different coup profiles and the contrasting responses from the so-called international community. From there, I relate military coups with the phenomenon of ‘choiceless democracies’ and discuss various perspectives that come into play when assessing government legitimacy.
French imperial suffrage
The question that helps us to understand French/Gaullist policy towards Africa from the mid 1940s to the end of the 1970s was how France could exist as an autonomous power in a world structured by East–West geopolitical competition. Compared with its rivals, France had no particular edge. It was neither a military power like the USA or the Soviet Union, nor a global financial power like the UK, with the City of London and its empire of tax havens. Nor could it compete industrially with either the USSR or the USA, or with some of its allies such as West Germany and Japan, who were to undergo rapid economic reconstruction. For General de Gaulle, it was the colonial empire and its resources that were to serve as France’s strategic lever.
Achieving the status of an industrial and military power in the post-1945 world depended on the control of raw material supplies, notably oil and uranium (Painter 2010). While the oil industry had until then been dominated by Anglo-Saxon companies, uranium supplies were controlled by the USA, UK and the USSR. The strategic importance of uranium had not escaped the attention of de Gaulle, who was keen to equip France with a nuclear force de frappe (Bozo 2010). Thanks to the franc zone, which included the territories using the CFA franc, France was able to access the goods and services of its colonies in its own currency, the franc, and to use the latter’s dollar reserves for its own purposes. This colonial monetary control helped sustain the value of the franc and increase France’s policy autonomy in a world economy under US dollar hegemony. As Pierre Moussa, Director of Economic Affairs and Planning at the Ministry of Overseas France, pointed out in 1957: ‘A hard currency shortage implies financial dependence vis-à-vis foreign countries. Where there is financial dependence, there is political dependence.’ Given that ‘the independence of French policy is linked to France’s ability to do without American aid’, Moussa argued that the maintenance of the colonial empire ‘could well be a necessary condition’ for French political independence from the USA (Moussa 1957, 203–204; author’s translation).
From the Brazzaville Conference in 1944, when the aim was to decide the future of the African colonies without Africans at the table, to the 1958 referendum, when the various territories of the empire had to say whether they wished to remain within the framework of the ‘Franco-African community’ or become independent, France was forced to make a few gradual political concessions (abolition of forced labour, recognition of the freedom of association, extension of universal suffrage, etc.). Yet it never envisaged independence for its African colonies south of the Sahara (Borrel et al. 2021). When decolonisation became inevitable, France took the lead by making access to independence conditional on the signing of ‘cooperation agreements’, which were a means of guaranteeing its sovereignty in areas such as foreign trade, strategic raw materials, diplomacy, military bases, monetary management, and so on. France’s control over the resources of its former colonies, their monetary and financial systems, and their diplomatic policies was to be one of the pillars of General de Gaulle’s policy of grandeur (Pigeaud and Sylla 2024a).
These ‘cooperation agreements’ were signed by political leaders whom France created and helped to take the reins of their country, often through electoral fraud and, when this proved insufficient, through the prohibition or systematic repression of progressive political movements and parties – nationalist, pan-Africanist and communist. The case of the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) speaks for itself. A well-established independence party in Cameroon, the UPC was dissolved in 1955 by the colonial administration. Its main leaders, from Ruben Um Nyobè to Ernest Ouandié, were assassinated one by one (Deltombe, Domergue and Tatsitsa 2011). The former High Commissioner for the French Republic in Cameroon, Pierre Messmer, later admitted that ‘France [granted] independence to those who demanded it least, after having eliminated politically and militarily those who demanded it most intransigently’ (Messmer 1998, 115; author’s translation).
At the time of independence, with the exception of Sekou Toure in Guinea and Sylvanus Olympio in Togo, all the other territories of the French Empire south of the Sahara were led by loyal French allies (Bancel 2002; Pigeaud and Sylla 2024a). Despite the reduction in its military troops in Africa from 30,000 in 1960 to 15,000 in the 1980s (Luckham 1982; CDEF 2015), France relentlessly deployed its imperial suffrage: its right to choose who should govern in the territories of its former colonial empire. Between 1960 and 1989, as the gendarme of the West in its own sphere of influence (Vallin 2015), Paris intervened militarily on nearly 40 occasions in 16 African countries, to restore its protégés to power, overthrow undesirable leaders and, more generally, defend its interests (Rouvez 1994; Schmidt 2013, ch. 7).
The end of the Cold War and the return to a multiparty system – described in the scholarly literature as a ‘democratic transition’ – did not put an end to France’s interventionist practices in African affairs. The regular organisation of multiparty elections did not shake up the Françafrique order in any substantial sense. Rather, they enabled the longevity or the coming to power of leaders who were more concerned with their own interests and those of the ex-metropole than with the legitimate expectations of their populations. Saying that does not imply that these leaders were or are puppets with no autonomy at all from France. The point is rather that they ordinarily avoided disruption of the neo-colonial status quo as this would imperil their own subordinate rule. Even if they diversify their economic and diplomatic partnerships, they still cater to French interests.
People’s revolt against Françafrique
Françafrique is a system of alliances between French and African elites based on the predation of the continent’s resources, the denial of African peoples’ right to self-determination, the repression of progressive forces and unprecedented impunity. Its longevity has proved incompatible with democracy, in the minimalist sense of allowing citizens to freely choose their own leaders (Pigeaud and Sylla 2024a, 304–307).
In the case of five oil-producing countries in Central Africa (Gabon, Congo, Cameroon, Chad and Equatorial Guinea), French government policy has always revolved around the maintenance of ‘stable’ and counter-revolutionary despotic regimes.2 A loyal ally of the French establishment which facilitated his rise to power in 1967, Omar Bongo ruled Gabon until his death in 2009. His son, Ali Bongo, succeeded him as president and held on to power with victories in fraudulent elections in 2009 and 2016. The twinned presidential and parliamentary elections of August 2023 were no exception to the rule. The ruling party introduced an unfair single bulletin system which gave it a significant advantage over the opposition. On 30 August, after the results were announced in the middle of the night, General Brice Oligui Nguema led a coup that ended 56 years of the Bongo dynasty. In Cameroon, 91-year-old Paul Biya has been in power since 1982. His party dominates the National Assembly and Senate. In Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, a former military officer, has presided over the country’s destiny since 1979, with the exception of the 1992–97 period: a 40-year reign. In Chad, since the assassination of François Tombalbaye in 1975, successive leaders have been warlords who came to power through non-electoral means. Since 1990, Idriss Deby has ruled the country with an iron fist, regularly winning re-election in elections with no real opponent. The Central African Republic has regained a degree of political stability with Faustin-Archange Touadéra, who has removed the constitutional locks preventing him from running for more than two terms.
Though less static, the situation of francophone West Africa is hardly democratic. Benin inaugurated the cycle of national conferences in 1990 (Robinson 1994). The 2019 parliamentary elections were the first to be held since then without the opposition. As a result, turnout was low (27%). The 2021 presidential election happened under the same conditions. Patrice Talon won with 86% of the vote, ahead of two unknown candidates. In Côte d’Ivoire, Alassane Ouattara came to power in 2011, following a controversial electoral process. In the post-election conflict that pitted him against Laurent Gbagbo, France, the USA and the UN sided with him (Pigeaud 2015). Since then, the Ivorian opposition no longer really exists on an institutional level. Ouattara forced a third term in 2020, winning the election by 95% in the first round. In Togo, Gnassingbé Eyadema, a soldier who served in the French army, came to power in 1967, four years after organising the assassination of Sylvanus Olympio, among the first military coups in the historical franc zone. He enjoyed constant support from France during his long reign of terror. After his death in 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbé took over the reins of the country. He is currently serving his fourth presidential term. Following a recent amendment to the Togolese constitution, the president is now elected by a parliament that is currently largely controlled by his political party. In Niger, Mahamadou Issoufou was re-elected in 2016 with 95% of the vote in a second round boycotted by the opposition. In 2021, at the end of his two terms, he supported the candidacy of Mohamed Bazoum, who won the second round of voting in a ballot marred by irregularities and fraud. He obtained less than 2.5 million votes out of a population of 22.7 million, including 9.6 million of voting age (Pigeaud and Sylla 2024a, 304–307).
In Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina was re-elected president in the first round of voting in November 2023, after a ballot boycotted by the opposition and most voters (46% turnout) and marked by vote buying on the part of his supporters (Caramel 2023). In the Comoros, former Colonel Azali Assoumani came to power following a putsch in 1999. He then ran for three terms (2002–06; 2016–19; 2019–24). In January 2024, he was re-elected in the first round of an election marred by ‘numerous irregularities, such as ballot box stuffing, army intervention in polling stations and a lack of transparency in the compilation of results’, according to French newspaper Le Monde (Hochet-Bodin 2024).
Economic crisis
The longevity of Françafrique has meant economic decline or stagnation for the populations of the historical franc zone. Agricultural resource-rich Côte d’Ivoire is the zone’s most important country in terms of economic size. Its real GDP per capita in 2022 was 19.5% below the best level obtained in 1978. Niger had reached its highest level of real GDP per capita in 1965. In 2022, this indicator was 37.1% below this historic peak. Despite its wealth of natural resources – such as oil, uranium, timber and manganese – Gabon’s average real income in 2022 was half the highest level it achieved, in 1976. The countries that recorded their highest real GDP per capita from 2018 such as Comoros, Mali, Senegal and Benin are classified as least developed countries (LDCs) (see Table 1 ). The upturn in economic growth seen since the 2000s, stimulated first by the boom in commodity prices and then by recourse to foreign currency debt, must be properly interpreted. It more or less makes up for the ‘lost decades’ of the past. Socio-economic indicators such as the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index (HDI) rank the countries of the historical franc zone among the worst performers in the world (UNDP 2024).
Real GDP per capita evolution in the franc zone (1960–2022).
| Best level of real GDP per capita (in constant 2015 US$) (A) | Year when the best level of real GDP per capita was achieved | Real GDP per capita in 2022 (in constant 2015 US$) (B) | Gap (B–A)/A (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Equatorial Guinea | 14223 | 2008 | 5945 | −58.2 |
| Gabon | 14801 | 1976 | 6637 | −55.2 |
| Republic of the Congo | 2891 | 1984 | 1704 | −41.0 |
| Central African Republic | 611 | 1978 | 365 | −40.3 |
| Niger | 867 | 1965 | 545 | −37.1 |
| Chad | 778 | 2014 | 590 | −24.1 |
| Cameroon | 1833 | 1986 | 1442 | −21.4 |
| Guinea-Bissau | 779 | 1997 | 622 | −20.2 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | 3017 | 1978 | 2430 | −19.5 |
| Mali | 779 | 2019 | 749 | −3.9 |
| Comoros | 1383 | 2018 | 1363 | −1.5 |
| Burkina Faso | 738 | 2021 | 733 | −0.8 |
| Togo | 893 | 1980 | 888 | −0.5 |
| Benin | 1256 | 2022 | 1256 | 0.0 |
| Senegal | 1465 | 2022 | 1465 | 0.0 |
Source: World Bank (2024).
Africa’s youth are the biggest losers of this extraverted and dependent mode of accumulation, and the group that suffers most from the state violence that accompanies it. Between 1960 and 2020, the number of 15–24 year olds in the 16 countries of the historical franc zone increased from 8.3 to 46.4 million ( Table 2 ). Public authorities are struggling to meet the high expectations of this group in terms of education, training and access to decent employment. Young people who think they have no future in their own country take the path of so-called clandestine emigration, risking their lives in a context of harsher and inhumane European migration policies. Some states, like Niger under Mohamed Bazoum, have accepted to be active agents in the European Union’s (EU) policy of externalising its borders in Africa. The young people who remain nolens volens in their country are often those who are harassed, imprisoned, tortured or killed during demonstrations to resist the many abuses of their governments.
Population aged 15–24 years old in the historical franc zone (in thousands).
| 1960 | 2020 | |
|---|---|---|
| Benin | 444 | 2449 |
| Burkina Faso | 935 | 4247 |
| Cameroon | 948 | 5182 |
| Central African Republic | 292 | 1167 |
| Chad | 531 | 3240 |
| Comoros | 34 | 153 |
| Republic of the Congo | 188 | 1041 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | 691 | 5520 |
| Gabon | 79 | 402 |
| Guinea | 630 | 2728 |
| Madagascar | 819 | 5728 |
| Mali | 974 | 4130 |
| Mauritania | 163 | 888 |
| Niger | 695 | 4699 |
| Senegal | 590 | 3225 |
| Togo | 300 | 1628 |
| Total | 8315 | 46426 |
Frustrated by the actions of French diplomats and its military, Paris’s double standards and the often humiliating declarations of French officials vis-à-vis African peoples, their women and their leaders, the West African youth have become the spearhead of an open and organised revolt against French imperialism and its local allies. Through social networks, they can coordinate their struggles and resistances, and gain access to alternative narratives conveyed by ‘influencers’ claiming to be pan-Africanists or even anti-imperialists (Pigeaud and Sylla 2024b). It is these young people, generally excluded from the electoral rolls,3 who are contesting French militarism in the Sahel and the CFA franc, a system of monetary colonialism which still functions unaltered despite the so-called reform announced by Macron and Ouattara at the end of 2019 (Pigeaud and Sylla 2021).
Against the backdrop of this revolt against Françafrique, ‘civil putsches’ – the opportunistic manipulation of constitutions, the instrumentalisation of the judiciary, fraudulent elections or elections with no significant opponents, and the resurgence of state violence and censorship, including internet restrictions to disrupt popular protests – have been the norm since 2020 in the historical franc zone. Even Senegal, often viewed as an exception, has not escaped this trend (Zeilig and Sylla 2023). Civil putsches are a symptom of the ongoing crisis of French imperialism to the same extent as military coups. Nine successful putsches occurred in the continent between August 2020 and August 2023, eight of which took place in the historical franc zone ( Table 3 ).
Military coups in Africa 2020–23.
| Country | Date | Former president/head of government | Putsch perpetrator |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mali | August 2020 | Ibrahima B. Keïta | Colonel Assimi Goïta |
| Chad | April 2021 | Idriss Deby Itno | General Mahamat I. Deby |
| Mali | May 2021 | Bah N’Daw | Colonel Assimi Goïta |
| Guinea | September 2021 | Alpha Conde | Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya |
| Sudan | October 2021 | Abdalla Hamdok | General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan |
| Burkina Faso | January 2022 | Roch Marc Christian Kabore | Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri S. Damiba |
| Burkina Faso | September 2022 | Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri S. Damiba | Captain Ibrahima Traore |
| Niger | July 2023 | Mohamed Bazoum | General Abdourahamane Tiani |
| Gabon | August 2023 | Ali Bongo Ondimba | General Brice O. Nguema |
Source: Author’s elaboration based on online sources, including Peyton et al. (2024).
An alternative account of recent military coups
With a few exceptions mostly pertaining to the radical political economy tradition,4 the literature on coups in Africa is essentially Western-centric and ahistorical. Indeed, it tends to posit Western liberal democracy as the template against which African realities should be interpreted. Since military coups have become very rare in the West, most authors tend to consider them as empirically and morally pathological political phenomena without taking the trouble to place them in a broader historical context.5
Africa is a large continent made up of 54 sovereign countries, whose borders were drawn at the Berlin Conference in 1884–85 in a way that reflected the appetites and priorities of the European colonial powers, and consequently disregarded the logics of cultural belonging and identity. As an extractive enterprise, colonialism was never a fertile ground for the emergence of democratic political systems – built on popular will and control – and all the more so as the colonising powers often manipulated ethnic and community identities to impose their domination. When they became independent, for the most part at the turn of the 1960s, African countries faced the challenge of forming stable, inclusive states with a view to creating prosperous nations. But they had to contend with a Cold War context in which the powers of East and West, in their proxy wars, gave themselves the right to intervene to protect friendly regimes or overthrow leaders perceived as hostile (Assensoh and Alex-Assensoh 2001). Given this historical legacy, it is normal, in the statistical sense, for post-independence Africa to have experienced many political upheavals, coups and other instabilities.
Whatever one’s moral opinion of coups,6 the fact remains that they are a normal phenomenon in the life of nations, especially in their early stages. In 1833, for example, Spain became a constitutional monarchy and embarked on its first and longest parliamentary experiment. Over the next 42 years, it recorded 30 attempted military putsches, 11 of which were successful (Linz, Montero and Ruiz 2005; Sabaté, Espuelas and Herranz-Loncán 2022, 11). Most Latin American countries gained their independence in the nineteenth century. They were world coup champions until around 1950. As Curvale (2023, 4) points out:
Between 1815 and 1849, Latin America experienced 26 coups (out of [a world total of] 39), 102 (out of 129) for the next 50 years, 82 (out of 141) in the first half of the twentieth century, and 51 (out of 236) for the period 1950–1999.
Another lesson from the Latin American experience is that following national independence, countries need a period of incubation – which can be of varying lengths – to build institutions capable of preventing coups and eventually establishing governmental and constitutional stability. According to Curvale (2023, 15–16):
Building stable institutions, when at least two consecutive terms could be completed, was possible only after an average 46 years of turmoil. The efforts to adopt some kind of a legal framework are evidenced by the 166 constitutions that were in effect through the nineteen hundreds. And frequent executive turnover characterized that period.
There is, therefore, perhaps nothing special about the African experience since 1960, because the number of (attempted) coups does not represent an exception to world historical logic. That said, one must draw attention to the singularity of the Cold War period, a historical context that was extremely conducive to military interventions by imperialist countries (Schmidt 2013; Congressional Research Service 2022; Curtis 2023; Kushi and Toft 2023) and military putsches. With its 50 or so countries, Africa accounted for 92 successful coups out of a total of 256 worldwide between 1960 and 1989 ( Table 4 ). With the end of the Cold War, coups declined everywhere. In retrospect, given the experiences of Latin America and European countries such as Spain, it is remarkable that 16 African countries have never experienced a coup since 1960, while most of the rest were able to turn the page on military putsches just four decades later ( Table 5 ).
Coups in the historical franc zone by country and decade.
| Countries | 1960–69 | 1970–79 | 1980–89 | 1990–99 | 2000–09 | 2010–19 | 2020–23 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benin | 5 | 1 | 6 | |||||
| Burkina Faso | 1 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 11 | ||
| Cameroon | 0 | |||||||
| Central African Republic | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | |||
| Chad | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |||
| Comoros | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 | ||||
| Republic of the Congo | 4 | 2 | 1 | 7 | ||||
| Côte d’Ivoire | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Gabon | 2 | 1 | 3 | |||||
| Guinea | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||||
| Madagascar | 3 | 1 | 4 | |||||
| Mali | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | |||
| Mauritania | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | ||||
| Niger | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | |||
| Senegal | 0 | |||||||
| Togo | 3 | 1 | 4 | |||||
| Total – historical franc zone | 17 | 15 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 8 | 71 |
| Total – Africa | 36 | 32 | 24 | 36 | 9 | 13 | 10 | 160 |
| Total – World | 98 | 93 | 65 | 62 | 23 | 20 | 14 | 375 |
Source: Peyton et al. (2024).
Notes: The coup in Guinea in 2021 was added, as it is not recorded by this source. The episode recorded as a coup in Côte d’Ivoire in 2000 was omitted as its coding as a coup is debatable. Among the 10 coups recorded in Africa between 2020 and 2023, only one was non-military (Tunisia).
Decade where the last coup was recorded for African countries.
| Number of countries | Cumulative percentage of countries | |
|---|---|---|
| No coup | 16 | 29.6 |
| 1970–79 | 4 | 37.0 |
| 1980–89 | 3 | 42.6 |
| Last coup took place in: | ||
| 1990–99 | 13 | 66.7 |
| 2000–09 | 5 | 75.9 |
| 2010–19 | 5 | 85.2 |
| 2020–23 | 8 | 100 |
Source: Author’s elaboration based on Peyton et al. (2024).
Notes: No successful coup was recorded for the following 16 countries: Botswana, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Djibouti, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Eritrea, Namibia, South Africa and South Sudan. The last four countries became sovereign states (or freed from apartheid in the case of South Africa) from the 1990s. To read this table, for example, between 1970 and 1979 four countries recorded their last coup. By 1979, 20 African countries (37% of the total) had recorded their last coup.
Thirty youngest heads of state in the historical franc zone (1960–2024).
| Country | Head of state | Military | Age of first access to power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Republic of the Congo | Alfred Raoul | Yes | 29 |
| Republic of the Congo | Marien Ngouabi | Yes | 30 |
| Central African Republic | David Dacko | No | 30 |
| Togo | Gnassingbe Eyadema | Yes | 31 |
| Gabon | Omar Bongo | No | 31 |
| Mali | Moussa Traore | Yes | 32 |
| Burkina Faso | Thomas Sankara | Yes | 33 |
| Burkina Faso | Ibrahim Traore | Yes | 34 |
| Togo | Emmanuel Bodjolle* | Yes | 34 |
| Madagascar | Andry Rajoelina | No | 34 |
| Republic of the Congo | Denis Sassou Nguesso | Yes | 35 |
| Benin | Maurice Kouandete | Yes | 35 |
| Cameroon | Ahmadou Ahidjo | No | 35 |
| Chad | Goukouni Oueddei* | No | 35 |
| Mauritania | Moktar Ould Daddah | No | 35 |
| Mauritania | Mohamed M. Ould Ahmed Louly | Yes | 36 |
| Burkina Faso | Blaise Compaore | Yes | 36 |
| Guinea | Ahmed Sekou Toure | No | 36 |
| Chad | Mahamat Idriss Deby | Yes | 37 |
| Benin | Maurice Kouandete | Yes | 37 |
| Benin | Alphonse Amadou Alley | Yes | 37 |
| Comoros | Hamadi Madi Bolero* | No | 37 |
| Mali | Assimi Goïta* | Yes | 37 |
| Republic of the Congo | Joachim Yhombi-Opango | Yes | 38 |
| Chad | Idriss Deby Itno | Yes | 38 |
| Benin | Jean Baptiste Hacheme | Yes | 38 |
| Burkina Faso | Maurice Yameogo | No | 38 |
| Madagascar | Didier Ratsiraka | Yes | 38 |
| Togo | Faure Gnassingbe | No | 38 |
| Comoros | Ali Soilih | No | 38 |
Source: Author’s compilation based on online sources (Wikipedia, articles, government websites, and so on).
Notes: The required data (birth, death, coming to power for the first time, departure from power, civil or military status) were obtained for the heads of state of the 16 countries of the historical franc zone, including those who led a transition, whatever its duration. * indicates cases where the day and month of birth were not available. For each country, the compilation starts from the year of national independence. In the military column, ‘no’ indicates a civilian (including those who led rebel groups like G. Oueddei), ‘yes’ refers to a military officer.
The literature on coups in Africa also suffers from a failure to take into account the reality of Françafrique. For reasons detailed below, the former French colonies are over-represented in statistics relating to coups on the continent and beyond, especially since the 2000s ( Table 4 ). Between 1960 and 2023, 71 of the 160 coups recorded on the African continent took place in the 16 countries of the historical franc zone.
Since 2020, with the military putsches in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Niger and Gabon, the international media and many commentators began to speak of the ‘return’ of coups in Africa, and to deplore it. Their explanations often focused on ‘bad governance’ and ‘authoritarian drift’, sometimes in relation to the lack of economic progress in a context of unemployment, social inequality, and so on. For example, a publication by the United Nations Development Programme examined this question. Over 190 pages, the authors produced interesting data, including interviews, which enabled them to list a number of explanatory factors (UNDP 2023). But, as with most analyses, they missed the two elephants in the room: foreign militarism and Françafrique.
The NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), USA, UK and French military aggression against Libya in 2011 created a destabilising regional security context that facilitated the spread of jihadist and separatist groups in the heart of the Sahel (Campbell 2013; Capasso and Elkorghli 2024). It also offered a pretext to their governments, France and the USA, to install their troops in that zone to fight ‘terrorism’. For example, France launched Operation Serval in 2013, followed by Barkhane (2014–22). Given the limited results achieved in terms of providing durable regional political stability and territorial integrity, the ground was fertile for military leaders to seize power through coups or the ballot box amid growing popular frustrations. Between 2010 and 2023, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad accounted for 11 coups. In other countries in the region, such as Libya, Egypt and Sudan, military regimes have gradually taken power. In Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was elected president in 2019. He is a general, former Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces and then Minister of Defence, who rose through the ranks after achieving convincing results in the fight against terrorism. From 2012, following NATO’s intervention in Libya, to 2023, among the 19 successful coups in Africa, 15 took place in the Sahel and North Africa.7
Being located in a zone militarised by foreign powers is one determining factor in recent coups, the other is the country’s status as a former French colony. Eight of the nine military putsches recorded on the African continent since 2020 have taken place in the historical franc zone, within which two types of countries can be distinguished. On the one hand, there are the Sahelian countries, faced with a worrying security situation. On the other hand, there are countries where coups have taken place following electoral fraud and manipulation (Gabon) and opportunistic constitutional changes (Guinea).
Instead of talking about the ‘return’ of coups on the African continent, it might be more accurate to refer to the ongoing problem of putsches in its French-speaking part. How can we explain the fact that the countries of the historical franc zone have been the champions of coups from 1960 and that, with the exception of Sudan, all the coups recorded since 2020 have taken place there? There are three complementary explanations.
First, because of its interventionism in African affairs, Paris has rarely given its ex-colonies the latitude to autonomously develop their own political institutions, starting with their armies, which seldom constitute a coherent organic body. In the historical franc zone, recent coups have been carried out by the army’s elite: the special forces (Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea) or the Presidential Guard (Niger and Gabon). Many African governments are likely to be more repressive towards their citizens than their historical franc zone counterparts. However, the military do not plan a coup and pull it off overnight. In Burkina Faso, from 1960 to early 2023, the 11 initiated coups had a 100% success rate, according to the Coup d’État Project database. This is an eloquent indication of state fragility. By contrast, outside the historical franc zone, the page of putsches was turned at the end of the 1990s for most countries, even if this does not guarantee respect for elementary democratic principles.
Second, is the phenomenon of aging presidents.8 As young civilian leaders tend to be excluded from electoral competition, only those who bear arms are generally able to rise to the top of the executive. Between 1960 and 2024, of the 30 youngest leaders who came to power in the historical franc zone, 20 are from the military, along with one warlord. Colonel Alfred Raoul, who ensured a short transition in Congo Brazzaville after the resignation of Alphonse Massamba-Débat in 1968, is the youngest leader in the historical franc zone. He was 29 years old when he came to power. By contrast, with his election in Senegal in 2000 at 73 years old, Abdoulaye Wade became the oldest leader among those who seized state power for the first time. Since 1960, among the 30 oldest leaders at the time of their first access to power, 24 are civilians, two are military officers who successfully won elections as civilian candidates, two are military officers who were chosen to lead a political transition, and two perpetrated military putsches. General Abdourahamane Tiani, the new head of the Niger state following the July 2023 coup, stands apart as the oldest successful putschist of this top 30 ( Table 7 ).
Thirty oldest heads of state in the historical franc zone at the time of their first access to power (1960–2024).
| Country | Head of state | Military | Age of first access to power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senegal | Abdoulaye Wade | No | 73 |
| Guinea | Alpha Conde | No | 72 |
| Burkina Faso | Michel Kafando | No | 72 |
| Comoros | Saïd Mohamed Djohar | No | 71 |
| Mali | Dioncounda Traore | No | 70 |
| Mali | Bah N’Daw | Transition | 70 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | Alassane Ouattara | No | 69 |
| Mauritania | Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi* | No | 69 |
| Mali | Ibrahim Boubacar Keita | No | 68 |
| Gabon | Rose Francine Rogombe | No | 66 |
| Madagascar | Gabriel Ramanantsoa | Transition | 66 |
| Madagascar | Albert Zafy | No | 65 |
| Comoros | Tadjidine ben Saïd Massounde | No | 64 |
| Central African Republic | Michel Djotodia* | No | 64 |
| Mauritania | Ba Mamadou M’Bare* | No | 63 |
| Mauritania | Mohamed Ould Ghazouani | Conversion | 62 |
| Niger | Mamadou Tandja* | Conversion | 61 |
| Niger | Mohamed Bazoum | No | 61 |
| Comoros | Ahmed Mohamed | No | 60 |
| Congo | Pascal Lissouba | No | 60 |
| Guinea | Louis Lansana Beavogui | No | 60 |
| Comoros | Mohamed Taki Abdoulkarim | No | 60 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | Henri Konan Bedie | No | 59 |
| Central African Republic | Catherine Samba-Panza | No | 59 |
| Niger | Abdourahamane Tiani | Yes | 59 |
| Niger | Mahamadou Issoufou | No | 59 |
| Gabon | Leon Mba | No | 59 |
| Comoros | Ahmed Abdallah Abderamane | No | 58 |
| Central African Republic | Faustin-Ange Touadera | No | 58 |
| Côte d’Ivoire | Robert Guei | Yes | 58 |
Source: Author’s compilation based on online sources (Wikipedia, articles, government websites, and so on).
Notes: The required data (birth, death, coming to power for the first time, departure from power, civil or military status) were obtained for the heads of state of the 16 countries of the historical franc zone, including those who led a transition, whatever its duration. * indicates cases where the day and month of birth were not available. For each country, the compilation starts from the year of national independence. In the miliary column, ‘no’ indicates a civilian (including those who belonged to rebel groups, like M. Djotodia), ‘yes’ indicates a military officer; ‘transition’ means a military leader chosen to lead a political transition, ‘conversion’ refers to a former military leader who successfully won an election as a civilian candidate.
The gerontocratic nature of political systems in the historical franc zone has been reinforced over the decades. At the time of independence, the heads of state were relatively young. In 1960, David Dacko (Central African Republic) and Ahmadou Ahidjo (Cameroon) were aged 30 and 35, Sekou Toure (Guinea) and Modibo Keita (Mali) were respectively 38 and 45 years old. Nowadays, incumbent presidents such as Paul Biya and Denis Sassou Nguesso, who have ruled their respective countries for four decades, have locked up the political system, removing constitutional term limits, age ceilings (as in the case of Alassane Ouattara in Côte d’Ivoire) and sometimes increasing the lower age limits to bar young leaders from electoral competition (as with Idriss Deby vis-à-vis Succès Masra).
All of this has led to the extraordinary situation where military coups are the main obstacle to the phenomenon of aging heads of state in the historical franc zone. Assimi Goita was 37 years old when he overthrew Ibrahima Boubacar Keita, then aged 75. Ibrahima Traoré was 34 years old when he organised a putsch against Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba, seven years his senior, who had himself put an end to Roch Kaboré’s regime at the age of 64. Mamadi Doumbouya was 41 when he took over from an 83-year-old Alpha Conde. When he illegally succeeded his father, who had died at the age of 68, Mahamat Deby was 37 years old. Given the popularity of certain putschists among young people, it could be said that military coups are, to a certain extent, a way for them to challenge the monopolisation of state power by the gerontocracy.
Finally, there is the particular and contradictory place of the military as agents of change within the framework of French neo-colonialism. The military is not a progressive group per se. In fact, it tends to be rather elitist and conservative. In the post-independence period, France has embraced the military as a means of getting rid of undesirable leaders or breaking political deadlocks. With the exception of the likes of Sekou Toure, it had been very difficult for young civilian leaders to gain power without French support. Of the 13 youngest heads of state in the historical franc zone, only four were civilians, known for their loyalty to France ( Table 6 ).9 Paradoxically, given Paris’s long-standing control over the choice of leaders in the historical franc zone, the few among them who articulated a political project breaking with French neo-colonialism or having a pan-Africanist or ‘revolutionary’ nature, were from the military, such as Marien Ngouabi (Congo), Richard Ratsimandrava (Madagascar) and Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), all of whom were assassinated. As the civilian political regimes of the historical franc zone do not challenge their countries’ neo-colonial status, only military leaders have on rare occasions opened a window of hope.
The first exception to this iron law of Françafrique has been the Senegalese presidential election of 24 March 2024, won by Bassirou Diomaye Faye. Aged 44, Faye is a tax inspector, like his friend and accomplice Ousmane Sonko, leader of the PASTEF party (Patriotes Africains du Sénégal pour le Travail, l’Éthique et la Fraternité), who was barred from running. For the first time in the 16 countries of the historical franc zone, a young candidate opposed to Françafrique was able to triumph in relatively free and transparent elections, right from the first round. Years of intense mobilisation by the Senegalese people and their diasporas forced President Macky Sall, a staunch ally of France, to abandon his speculative bid for a third term and to organise as soon as possible the presidential election originally scheduled for February 2024, but which he had unilaterally cancelled without offering any convincing justification. Faye and Sonko faced the full repressive panoply of the Senegalese state and were only released from prison 10 days before the ballot. Alongside the often arbitrary detention of over 1,000 demonstrators, activists, opponents and journalists, the road to this political changeover was littered with the corpses of over 60 Senegalese, mostly young people under the age of 25, who fell to the bullets of the forces of law and order (Amnesty International 2023, 2024; La Maison des Reporters n.d.), with deafening silence from France and the rest of the ‘international community’ (Sylla 2021; Zeilig and Sylla 2023).
By the end of March 2024, the historical franc zone had four heads of state over whom Paris had no control and who had announced their intention to free their countries from the shackles of Françafrique: the continent’s youngest civilian leader, Bassirou Diomaye Faye and three military leaders, including the continent’s youngest head of state, Captain Ibrahima Traoré.
Typology of coups
The coups that have taken place in the historical franc zone since 2020 do not all follow the same logic. This is why they have been met with contrasting responses from the ‘international community’ – the West and its allies – and institutions such as the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Schematically, three types can be distinguished in terms of liberation aspirations – ambitions to escape the French/imperialist grip for a more sovereign and popular trajectory. There are ‘conservative’ military putsches such as those by Mahamat Idriss Deby (Chad) and Brice Oligui Nguema (Gabon), which reorganise the neo-colonial framework. Guinea is an example of a ‘pragmatic’ military putsch: Mamadi Doumbouya’s new regime has no particular ideological orientation; its stance towards France and the West is neither overly neo-colonial nor anti-imperialist. Finally, there are the ‘patriotic’ putsches, those explicitly opposed to French neo-colonialism and, by extension, Western hegemony.
The ‘international community’, the AU and ECOWAS have so far been relatively comfortable with the ‘conservative’ putsches in Chad and Gabon. They have not been too harsh in their condemnation. Nor have they resorted to unfavourable media propaganda or economic and financial sanctions against the new authorities, their entourage and their country. On the contrary, their attitude was to normalise the unconstitutional changes in these two countries by conferring a degree of political legitimacy on them.
Following his putsch in Gabon, General Nguema was keen to reassure Paris that he had no intention of calling into question its military presence or economic interests in the country. He visited French allies such as President Macky Sall (January 2024) and President Alassane Ouattara (April 2024) before his meeting in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron (end of May 2024) (Deux 2024; Kane 2024; Sud Quotidien 2024). Similarly, Macron was the only Western leader to attend Idriss Deby’s funeral (April 2021). Some months later, on 9 July 2021, at a joint press conference with Macron in Paris, Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum justified Mahamat Deby’s putsch by arguing that respect for the Chadian constitution would not have guaranteed the stability of Chad and the region. Speaking on behalf of the AU, the now defunct G5 Sahel and the French partner, he recommended ‘taking the gamble’ of working with the military (Presidency of the Republic of France 2021). On 20 October, the now infamous ‘Black Thursday’, Mahamat Deby’s regime heavily suppressed popular protests against prolonging the Chadian military transition. According to a report by the UN Committee on Torture, on that day, between 50 and 150 people were killed, between 150 and 180 went missing and over 1,300 were arrested (RFI 2022). No genuine condemnations or sanctions came from the ‘international community’.
By contrast, when Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown, Macron tried hard to reinstall him. He sought the support of ECOWAS, under the presidency of Nigerian Bola Tinubu, a leader lacking internal legitimacy. ECOWAS put in place a range of tough economic and financial sanctions against landlocked Niger and its new rulers. At the same time, it gave the military leaders an ultimatum to free Bazoum and reinstate him, under threat of foreign military intervention. The presidents of Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin announced their readiness to send troops to Niger. In response, the military regimes in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea expressed their solidarity with Niger, declaring that any military intervention against the latter would result in their collective retaliation. This raised the stakes and the intervention did not take place. The African peoples were overwhelmingly opposed, as was an anxious Algeria. The Nigerian Senate also objected to President Tinubu’s war intentions. The USA did not follow France’s warmongering logic either, calculating that it could secure its military presence and investments in Niger through diplomatic means (Broder and Sylla 2024).
The failure of France and its African allies has shown the leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger that their futures are now linked. Faced with sanctions, the hostility of several neighbouring countries who have shown more enthusiasm for intervening militarily in Niger than for supporting the fight against jihadism and separatist groups, and the reluctance of the West to sell them arms, the three countries have drawn closer to Russia, which supplies them with weapons, equipment and military instructors (Wezeman, Gadon and Wezeman 2023). At the end of January 2024, the three countries announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS, accused of being captured by France/Western imperialist agenda. This decision is a reaction against the sanctions they endured but also a way of shielding themselves against any future pressure from the regional organisation to hold regular elections and facilitate the transition to civilian rule.
Having expelled French troops from their territories and in some cases broken off diplomatic relations with Paris, the three countries have set up the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a mutual defence pact and also an economic and monetary integration framework that should lead to a future confederation and to the exit from the CFA franc, according to General Tiani (Ferdjani 2024). In addition to denouncing their fiscal conventions with France, these countries have renegotiated their mining contracts, or terminated the operating licences of certain French companies. This has been the case with ORANO (formerly Areva), a company majority-controlled by the French state, which has exploited Niger’s uranium for over 50 years. Goviex, a Canadian group operating in the uranium sector, endured the same fate. Much to the dismay of the EU, Niger’s new rulers cancelled a 2015 migrant smuggling law that contravened people’s free mobility. More unexpectedly perhaps, they asked American troops to leave their country (Powell 2024).
The advent of the AES, the result of the determination of ‘patriotic’/pan-Africanist military leaders, represents an unprecedented development for the historical franc zone and undoubtedly for the rest of the continent. It has the potential to extricate people of the Sahel from the long period of neo-colonial domination, to reinforce their collective sovereignty and to breathe new life into pan-African integration and solidarity. But this project of national liberation is not without its challenges and contradictions.
It has often been noted that regimes with anti-imperialist or socialist aspirations tend to become more authoritarian in the face of the permanent pressure and destabilisation measures from imperialist countries and their local allies. This is the ‘barricade effect’ (Bricmont 2007). Thus, in each of the three countries the military authorities’ relationships with civil society organisations, trade unions, intellectuals, journalists, and other groups which tend to demand a rapid transition to civilian government, are marked by more or less latent repression (Engels 2022a, 2022b). The imperialist countries, moreover, rehashing their humiliating withdrawal from these countries, have not thrown in the towel. General Lecointre, a former French Army Chief of Staff, declared during an interview in mid April 2024:
What we Europeans have in common is the Mediterranean and Africa, where our destiny is at stake … Europe will have an obligation to return to Africa to help restore the state and bring back administration and development. It’s not China, Russia or [the] Wagner [Group] who are going to provide lasting solutions to the very great difficulties facing these African countries and their people. (Lecointre 2024; author’s translation)
Imperialist countries can also rely on the collaboration of hostile neighbours and various armed groups. For example, Benin, a coastal country and ally of France, showed solidarity with the ECOWAS sanctions against Niger. When Benin decided to reopen its borders, Niamey did not follow suit, accusing its neighbour of harbouring mercenaries and war materiel harmful to its interests. In retaliation, Benin blocked the pipeline through which Niger’s oil was to be transported. A Nigerien armed group, the Patriotic Liberation Front, sabotaged part of the pipeline, while another group with a similar name, the Patriotic Front for Justice, organised the kidnapping of a prefect from a locality in Agadez. Both are calling for Bazoum’s release and a return to ‘constitutional order’ (Fleming and Issoufou 2024; WADR 2024).
The alliance between Russia and the AES countries is interpreted by its African detractors as the replacement of one neo-colonial master by another. This point of view is generally conveyed by people who have rarely been moved by France’s imperialist practices in Africa, including the illegal sanctions it imposed on Mali and Niger through its control over the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) (Sylla 2023). This caricatural view implicitly denies Africans any autonomy of thought and action. Why should African countries not be free to enter into sovereign alliances that enable them to achieve their strategic objectives? Niger, for example, succeeded in ousting French and then American troops from its territory. They would never have been able to do this without outside help, in this case from Russia.10 There is also an essential difference between geopolitical alliances that have the potential to liberate countries long brutalised by imperialism, and those that are essentially neo-colonial in nature, like the ‘cooperation agreements’ that France imposed on the new rulers it chose for its ex-colonies south of the Sahara at the time of independence. Only time will tell whether the alliance between the countries of the Sahel and Russia is part of a logic of liberation or one of domination–subordination. A recent opinion survey published by the German Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Foundation (2024; author’s translation) recorded that ‘more than nine out of ten Malians are satisfied (83% very satisfied and 15% rather satisfied) with the cooperation between Mali and Russia.’
The impasse of ‘choiceless democracies’
The recent military coups in the historical franc zone intervened in a context of growing popular disenchantment with the so-called ‘democratic transition’ that started from the 1990s. The move away from single-party rule to ‘democracy’ has been an intrinsically contradictory process. On the one hand, political liberalisation implied in principle more ‘popular sovereignty’, the possibility for people to, among other things, freely choose their own representatives, speak their mind, demonstrate and claim their legitimate rights. On the other hand, economic liberalisation meant that the promises associated with political liberalisation could not be sustained as economic policy orientations were no longer (if ever they had been) under the control of their elected representatives (Sylla 2014). Under neoliberalism, the formulation, goals and instruments of economic policy are negotiated with external actors such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, foreign investors and bilateral partners. No matter who you elect, they will have to stick with the basic economic policy blueprint: a phenomenon rendered by the late Mkandawire (1999) as ‘choiceless democracies’ and by Gills and Rocamora (1992) as ‘low-intensity democracies’.
However, the most vivid description of the type of ‘democracy’ promoted by the West in the Third World in the post-Cold War period has been offered by Huntington (1993, 10): ‘Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities may make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic.’ African masses in the historical franc zone have been revolting against this specific pattern of ‘democracy’. The divorce between ‘democratic rule’ and popular expectations explains to some extent why a significant part of them have welcomed military coups and transitions. This is highlighted in the results of an opinion survey carried out in Mali in January 2024 that involved 2,055 interviewees from Bamako and nine other regional capitals (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 2024; author’s translation):
‘More than nine Malians out of ten are in favour of MINUSMA’s departure.’11
‘For four Malians out of five (81%), the general situation in the country has improved over the last twelve months.’
‘Almost all Malians (99%) are satisfied with the work of the security forces. The same trends can be observed in all regions.’
‘Four Malians out of five have confidence in the transition.’
‘More than nine Malians out of ten (95%) think that the general situation in the country will improve over the next six months.’
‘87% of Malians approve of the decision to postpone the elections, against 8% who consider it a bad decision.’
Afrobarometer surveys yield similar results for Burkina Faso (Loada 2024):
‘Only 36% of Burkinabè citizens consider their country to be “a full democracy” or “a democracy with minor problems”. Nearly two-thirds (65%) say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in the country.’
‘Nearly six out of 10 Burkinabè (59%) say that political parties create division and confusion, and that there is therefore no need for more than one in Burkina Faso.’
‘Two-thirds of Burkinabè citizens (66%) support military governments and say it is legitimate for the armed forces to take control of the country in the hypothetical case that elected leaders abuse their power for their own interests.’
This kind of evidence allows us to identify at least four different concepts of government legitimacy that are at play in discussions about democracy in Africa.
First, there is the legitimacy conferred by the observance of the ritual of organising regular ‘free and fair’ elections to choose representatives. Under the dominant normative framework of liberal democracy, a government tends to be considered legitimate if it is the expression of the popular vote. In contrast, governments that are the result of coups tend to suffer from a deficit of government legitimacy. Let us call this ‘ritual legitimacy in accessing power’. Second, there is the legitimacy based on complying more or less with the formalism of the liberal democratic system. For example, governments that tend to favour a free press, an independent judiciary, the freedom to demonstrate and so on are usually considered more legitimate than those where civil and political liberties are more restricted. Let us call this ‘ritual legitimacy in the exercise of power’. Third, government legitimacy can be based on socio-economic performance. Some governments can meet the two previous legitimacies yet suffer from a high level of unpopularity due to a lack of genuine economic progress felt by the majority. Conversely, governments that do not fit the liberal democracy canon can enjoy a high popular rating because of compelling economic performances that helped improve the living conditions of the masses. We might think here of China, for example. Let us call this ‘performance-based legitimacy’.
The two first forms of legitimacy described above intersect with the concept of ‘input legitimacy’, while the third is congruent with the concept of ‘output legitimacy’, also found in the literature.12 However, I would argue that this triptych works best for established and relatively sovereign governments. For countries where external powers’ imperial suffrage has often outweighed the expression of popular universal suffrage, one also needs to take into account what I would call ‘diplomatic legitimacy’, that is government legitimacy conferred by geopolitical alliances.
In most countries in the historical franc zone, one can argue that government legitimacy has often been the product of external support rather than the observance of the liberal democracy rituals or the delivery of tangible socio-economic benefits to their populations. Since the 1960s the West has supported particularly odious regimes in Africa, despotic governments that often came to power through fraudulent elections and that do not create any welfare for their people, for the simple reason that they work for its interests.13 The examples of Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso between 1987 and 2014 and Idriss Deby Itno in Chad between 1990 and 2021 come to mind. Following Deby’s death, Macron diplomatically backed the unconstitutional succession by his son. However, Macron did not refrain from harshly criticising the current military regime in Mali, calling for the rapid organisation of elections and demanding economic and financial sanctions from African countries, the West and its financial institutions.
This typology helps highlight the fact that imperialist countries, which often cloak themselves in the mantle of the ‘international community’, may oppose or support a given country based on concepts of government legitimacy that may sometimes be at odds with their so-called democratic values. Furthermore, thanks to this typology, we can understand why the recent coups in Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Gabon and Niger have been rather popular, at least at their outset. To speak of popular coups is shocking to a Western audience, who might see it as a sign of populism. If the majority of African populations sometimes welcome coups that the ‘international community’ condemns and generally sanctions financially, it is because they tend above all to articulate a performance-based legitimacy, while the ‘international community’ is usually more concerned with ritual aspects when convenient, as it has often shown no scruples in backing odious civilian or military regimes favourable to Western interests. Let us be clear: populations do not aspire to be ordinarily ruled by the military. But they see in some coups an opportunity to overcome the blockages of the liberal system.14 ‘The coup d’état can pre-empt revolution or lead to it’, as Ruth First (1970, 13) once remarked.
In Mali, for example, Colonel Assimi Goïta’s two coups emerged as a result of growing frustration among the population, and the military, over the terrorism in the northern part of the country occupied by separatist and jihadist groups. The French army was supposed to be fighting those groups, but without achieving convincing results. In Guinea, Colonel Doumbouya’s coup occurred after President Alpha Conde was elected for a third term. Conde had to manipulate his country’s constitution in order to remove the presidential term limits. By focusing only on ritual aspects, when it suits them, the ‘international community’ tends to obscure the legitimate concerns of the people, for whom democracy has little meaning if it does not help to improve their living conditions. The apparent popularity of certain coups thus reflects more a rejection of choiceless democracies than an embrace for military rule.
Conclusion
The conditions under which the countries of the historical franc zone obtained their national ‘independence’, the pursuit of a neo-colonial framework with the visible hand of France known as Françafrique, and the particular geopolitical challenges of those among them located in the Sahel, certainly contribute to explain the overrepresentation of francophone countries in the military coups recorded since 2020. These putsches, as this article has argued, are an indicator of a deep crisis of French imperialism in Africa.
In contrast to authors and institutions seeking solutions to coups in Africa through ‘governance’ reforms, the promotion of the ‘rule of law’, ‘pro-poor’ policies, and so on (see, for example, UNDP 2023), my alternative account points to the urgent need to end foreign militarism in Africa and Françafrique (including the abolition of the CFA franc in Central and West Africa). ‘Governance’ issues and symptoms of low economic development are ubiquitous across the African continent, yet recent coups happened mostly in francophone countries, especially those located in zones militarised by foreign powers.
While it is unwarranted to speak of a ‘return of coups’, it would also be a mistake to assume that only francophone countries have a legitimacy problem. Most African countries are currently experiencing the limitations of the promise of ‘democracy’ under neoliberal regimes (Cross 2015). Recent mass demonstrations in Kenya against the planned, but finally removed, Finance Bill are a case in point. The same could be said of recent labour strikes and popular movements against the high cost of living in Nigeria and for a significant increase of the minimum wage. All these developments, amid growing popular revolts, should lead us to question the elusive narrative of democracy ‘in retreat’ or ‘backsliding’. That language silences the structural economic violence suffered by ordinary people under the hands of their ‘democratically elected’ rulers and external agencies such as international financial institutions.
For impoverished and brutalised African masses, the inescapable reality is that the so-called ‘normal constitutional order’, rehashed by Western countries, ordinary civil society organisations and conventional intellectuals, has become increasingly illegitimate. From their perspective, electoral victory only provides a presumption of political legitimacy as the latter has to be earned by the achievement of socio-economic performances. As long as no genuine alternatives are put forward to liberate them from imperialist oppression and exploitation – which usually operate through the mediation of domestic ruling classes – really existing ‘democratic rule’ appears as a problem to be overcome.
Military coups, the increasingly despotic character of ‘democratically elected’ regimes, civil putsches and popular revolts are different responses to the growing gap between legitimate popular expectations and what the ‘normal constitutional order’ can objectively offer in most African countries. Escaping from this political impasse will require a critical scrutiny of what the West has sold to the rest of the world as ‘democracy’. I have argued the need not to feed ‘authoritarian’ appetites, often hidden behind so-called African cultural specificities, but rather to strive for what Hungarian Marxist philosopher István Mészáros (2000, 2022) called ‘substantive equality’ and ‘substantive democracy’.