Mushrooming crisis: Wave of African coups stokes fear in autocrats

NIGERIA: The military takeover in Niger at the end of July showed that democratic-turned-autocratic leaders of other nations may face a similar fate if the latest wave of coups in Africa continues.

Just over a month after the military takeover in which Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamad Bazoum, was overthrown, a coup in the central African nation of Gabon has increased a ripple of unrest across the region.

Four days after presidential elections in Gabon, soldiers deposed President Ali Bongo Ondimba after 14 years in office. He had succeeded his father Omar Bongo who served from 1967 until his death in 2009.

Ali Bongo’s son and key advisor, Noureddin Bongo Valentin, was waiting in the wings to continue the Bongo dynasty into a third generation. This extended rule by one family has long been a source of discontent among the population. In this respect, Gabon is not unique in Africa.

Hours after soldiers in Gabon named the country’s new military, there was a change in neighbouring Cameroon where 90-year-old President Paul Biya — who has ruled the country for more than 40 years — changed his military leadership. Political analyst Alex Gustave Azebaze finds it difficult to draw parallels between Gabon and Cameroon, however.

“Cameroonians like me follow very closely what is happening in Gabon, without indulging in grand illusions,” he told DW. “We believe in a resurgence of Cameroonian democrats from all camps to prevent the military from interfering in the political game.”

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame — in office since 2003 — also retired senior military officials last week. Shortly after Gabon’s coup, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, president of Guinea-Bissau since 2020, filled two new positions with security advisors to protect him.

“It is true that coups carried out by presidential security agents have become fashionable,” the president told reporters, assuring that “any suspicious move will be met with an appropriate response.”

In Mozambique, President Filipe Nyusi meanwhile condemned the coup in Gabon. He said there were no reasons to justify a putsch because there are problems in every country — and coups do not solve the continent’s development problems.

Nyusi added that the way democracy is exercised on the continent needs to be reviewed. He has ruled since 2015, with the state using repression to crack down on popular protests.

Africa is the epicentre of coups, but no two are alike, as per John Chin, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Security and Technology in the US state of Pennsylvania, who researches dynamic coups.

“We can distinguish between coups that bring about regime change to overthrow democratically elected governments, as we saw in Niger. And coups in which the leadership is replaced to preserve the ruling regime, as in Chad a few years ago,” Chin said.

But there is a wide variety of coups, Chin pointed out, and their causes are difficult to pinpoint clearly. Nevertheless, local and regional influences — such as poverty and a lack of democratic aspirations — can be cited as causes for the resurgence, rather than the presence of international actors such as Russia, France or the US, he added.

There were no coup attempts in Africa between 2007 and 2018, however that figure jumped to 11 between 2020 to 2022, and rose to 13 this year with Niger and Gabon.

The majority of these coups happened in West Africa. Six coups have occurred in West Africa since 2020: Two in Mali, two in Burkina Faso, one in Guinea and, most recently, one in Niger.

Coup plotters have to be strategic if they want to seize and retain power, Chin said, pointing out that an important factor in their calculus is international reactions: “The thing about successful coups is that you don’t easily see them coming,” Chin concluded, “including in Gabon.”