International | A year of coups in Africa

In less than a year, five neighboring African countries have suffered a coup: Sudan, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea. Popular revolutions, return of the uniform in politics, denunciation of corrupt elites or simply wind of renewal: how to interpret this new wave of blows?

Marc-Andre Boisvert
Postdoctoral researcher at the FrancoPaix Center of the Raoul-Dandurand Chair

Young but breathless democracies

In Chad, in 2021, the military brought to power the son of President and Marshal Idriss Déby Itno, who died at the front in nebulous circumstances, in defiance of the constitutional order of succession. In Sudan, the 2019 coup ended the regime of Omar al-Bashir, but in 2021 the unpopularity of the transitional government and growing tensions spawned a second coup. In both cases, these are authoritarian regimes whose transition to democracy remains more than uncertain.

In the three West African countries, the context of coups is different. Indeed, the dethroned presidents had been elected after a post-coup transition. In Mali, the 2012 coup ended an image of model democracy when the military took power. At that time, the breathless government could not block the advance of the jihadists who, taking advantage of the post-coup disorganization, took control of two thirds of the territory. After the transition, the favorite of the presidential election canceled a month before the coup, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was elected. In Burkina, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré is the first Burkinabè head of state since 1960 who has not come to power thanks to a coup. He was elected after a political crisis, which began in 2014 with a popular revolution and was followed by a coup in 2015. In Guinea, following the death of General Lansana Conté in 2008, putschist Moussa Dadis Camara launched an uncertain transition, which resulted in the election of historic opponent Alpha Condé.

The coups in these three countries have therefore driven out elected presidents, driven by great expectations, but also by difficult elections marred by irregularities. In each case, the blows were triggered by the inability of presidents to bring about the change so longed for by their citizens.

In Mali, a first coup ended protests following the disputed election in 2020, and a second in 2021 returned power to a civilian transitional government. In Burkina, the coup of 2022 was inspired by popular protests. As in Mali, the Burkinabè president, re-elected in 2020, seemed powerless against the jihadists, and the number of civilians killed continued to increase. In Guinea, the re-election of President Condé for a third term in 2020, after a constitutional amendment allowing him to do so, triggered a political crisis, while the president was increasingly isolated, and stubbornly kept all powers.

save the state from itself

In recent coups in Mali, Burkina and Guinea, the military reportedly “saved” the country from elected politicians who were deemed out of touch. With the intervention of the army, a sclerotic democratic institution incapable of responding to the aspirations of the people would have fallen.

But, even if these blows have a strong odor of populism – fighting against a corrupt elite, profiting from resentment against the French colonizer, rebelling against opaque mining contracts, playing the card of the strongman capable of standing up to jihadists –, these are not popular revolutions.

The new putschists come from the elites: trained in prestigious military academies (and often abroad), connected politically and economically. Several researchers have shown it: even if there have been fewer coups since 1989, the military continues to influence politics by other means.

In addition, the timeframes needed for the transition and the type of regime that will take shape remain unclear. Transition periods are getting longer, putschists gang up on international institutions and their sanctions, and there is little visibility on how to reform democratic institutions. It therefore seems difficult to see in these coups a revolution, and even less a guarantee that the interests of the citizens will be better taken into account by the military than by the fallen politicians.

Nevertheless, these coups reinforce the perception that the military can arrogate to itself the right to rectify the course of the state. If the justifications, from bad governance to insecurity and the inability to respond to citizens’ aspirations, are obvious, a real crisis of democracy is emerging in these countries. The question is therefore how to support a transition that will lead to viable, strong democratic institutions, and which will be able to play this role of “corrector”, without having to go through the coup d’état box.

Closer than you think

This wave of blows could have an economic impact on Canadian investments. Canadian firms are among the largest mining investors in West Africa. In Mali, 13 companies share assets of 7.6 billion dollars. In Burkina Faso, investments amount to more than 4 billion. But the repercussions are not only economic since Canada, through La Francophonie, maintains strong ties with the region. Mali remains one of the countries where Canada concentrates its development assistance.