Last week, soldiers in Guinea Bissau surrounded the government palace, attacking President Umaro Sissoco Embaló during a cabinet meeting. Although the coup attempt ultimately failed, the firefight resulted in numerous fatalities. Only a week earlier, widespread mutinies in Burkina Faso prompted army officers to depose another competitively elected African president.
These two latest military moves only add to what U.N. Secretary General António Guterres in October called an “epidemic of coups d’état.” From 2000 to 2020, the average was about two coup attempts per year in Africa. But in the past 12 months, eight coup attempts occurred — in Chad, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Sudan (twice), Burkina Faso and Guinea Bissau. Five of those coups succeeded in removing leaders from power.
What’s behind the extraordinary wave of African coups?
Some analysis points to regional contagion, or lack of international condemnation — while coup plotters tend to blame government corruption, mismanagement and faltering development. All of these explanations have merit. Coups, after all, are a political tactic. They are a means to gain power — rather than an end in themselves — and soldiers depose governments for many reasons.
But my research suggests a deeper trend is driving the upsurge in military interventions across Africa: The renewed turmoil of democratization, aggravated by entrenched ethnic armies and combat grievances.
Long-running authoritarian regimes are ending
Over the past decade, Africa has been experiencing a new wave of fledgling transitions to democracy.
Many of these transitions are occurring in countries with long histories of authoritarian rule. Guinea held its first competitive elections in 2010. In 2014, mass protests in Burkina Faso prevented President Blaise Compaoré from revoking constitutional term limits and extending his 27-year reign. His forced resignation led to free and fair elections.
From 2017 to 2019, protesters similarly helped topple entrenched dictators in Algeria, Gambia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, creating opportunities for political change. And last March, for the first time in its history, Niger transferred power from one democratically elected leader to another.
Other countries emerged from political violence that ended past democratic experiments. In 2012, both Guinea Bissau and Mali embarked on the difficult journey to reestablish democratic institutions after military coups felled their elected governments. Rebuilding from a devastating civil war, the Central African Republic successfully held competitive elections in 2016.
The recent spate of coups has been concentrated in these struggling, transitional democracies — rather than in Africa’s more established democracies such as Ghana and Benin, or in remaining entrenched dictatorships like Cameroon and Togo.
Burkina Faso’s coup makers capitalized on wider grievances within the ranks
Militaries often overthrow new democracies
Analysts have long pointed out the vital role that militaries play in democratization, as either the “midwife” or “gravedigger.”
By refusing to suppress mass protests or toppling staunchly repressive regimes, a country’s soldiers can facilitate democratic openings as “midwives.” Militaries also routinely obstruct democratization — in the extreme, by overthrowing elected governments — especially when efforts to enact changes threaten their entrenched interests. Hence the “gravedigger” moniker.
My research sheds light on how African dictators consolidate their power by building ethnic armies, where soldiers’ shared communal identity ensures loyalty. More than 50 percent of African autocracies have strategically recruited soldiers from the leadership’s ethnic background into their militaries — whether only into key command and control positions, throughout the officer corps, or down to the rank-and-file.
Ethnic armies resist democratization
But democratization often threatens these ethnic armies. In diverse societies, competitive elections may bring to power new leaders who no longer share the identity of the military. And new policy shifts may bring diversification and professionalization of the armed forces. This can be a threat to soldiers who have benefited from ethnically based recruitment and promotion criteria, which often include lucrative financial rewards. I found that in these circumstances, ethnic armies seize power nearly 90 percent of the time, reversing democratic gains.
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Sudan are all struggling with a legacy of entrenched ethnic armies that want to preserve their influence over politics and financial benefits.
In Guinea-Bissau, the Balanta-dominated military has deep ties to international drug trafficking. And Sudan’s Jelaba tribes have controlled the army’s officer corps since independence in 1956 — and manage multiple sectors of the Sudanese economy, from defense to agriculture.
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In Niger, an alliance of the western Djerma and Hausa ethnic groups has long dominated both the government and army. Niger’s failed 2021 coup occurred just days before an easterner from the Diffa Arabs, President-elect Mohamed Bazoum, was inaugurated. Not coincidentally, the losing candidate’s stronghold was in Niger’s west, the region from which most of the coup plotters also originated.
Armies also may have combat grievances
Of course, many African militaries, even those emerging from authoritarian rule, are already ethnically diverse. Their entrenched interests and potential reasons for opposing democratization might look quite different.
Other research suggests that poorly funded militaries in young democracies are particularly prone to seizing power. That’s a pattern now emerging in the Sahel, where rising extremist violence has placed unsustainable burdens on under-resourced militaries.
Thus far, soldiers’ combat grievances have resulted in coups in struggling democracies in Mali and Burkina Faso. In the run-up to Burkina Faso’s coup last month, mutineers demanded better support, training and resources for soldiers deployed to fight Islamic extremists.
In 2012, junior officers overthrew Mali’s 20-year-old democracy over the government’s handling of the Tuareg insurgency in the country’s north. Soldiers complained of insufficient weaponry, severe neglect and incompetent leadership. Ever since, Mali has experienced an intertwined downward spiral of extremist violence, poor governance and repeated coups.
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Are more coups coming?
Almost certainly, yes. Coups have a nasty track record of prompting more coups. Transitional governments in Africa are still struggling with entrenched military privileges — and insurgent and extremist violence continues to proliferate.
The Central African Republic and Ethiopia — two countries that appeared en route to democracy — now face major rebel offensives. There are even signs of civil-military strife in Nigeria, with insurrections flaring across the country. In early 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari “shuffled” top military leaders. In May, he alleged a coup plot.
These types of rumblings may foreshadow more coups. It’s possible that Africa’s coup epidemic is only beginning.
Kristen A. Harkness (@HarknessKristen) is a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of St. Andrews. She is the author of “When Soldiers Rebel: Ethnic Armies and Political Instability in Africa” (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
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