West Africa’s ‘coup belt’: Did Mali’s 2020 army takeover change the region? | Politics News

Four years ago this month, a group of Malian soldiers descended on a military base in Kati, close to the capital Bamako, arrested their most senior leaders, and seized weapons from the armoury.

Shortly after, they stormed Bamako in trucks, where they detained then-President Aboubakar Keita, as Malians jubilated in the streets. The August 18, 2020, coup d’etat came after weeks of protests against Keita who faced calls to resign, amid accusations that his government was corrupt and failed to clamp down on an armed rebellion in the country’s north waged by groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS). The new military government promised to tackle the fighters swiftly.

That August marked an end to eight years of political stability in Mali, where between 2012 and 2020 there were no military takeovers in an area that was coup-prone. The takeover also stamped the start of a political ripple in the wider West Africa region that has since seen other civilian governments fall.

“We largely saw civilian rule strengthening in Africa up until that moment, and I think that the Mali coup was a critical juncture in the weakening of that norm,” said Dan Eizenga of the United States-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS). The slew of coups is reminiscent of the 1980s-1990s when African countries newly liberated from colonial rule faced a barrage of rebellions.

“I don’t think you’ll find another four years that has seen so many coups and counter-coups since [that time],” Eizenga told Al Jazeera.

Here’s how the Malian coup unfolded, and a timeline of the military takeovers that have since followed:

Coup within a coup

After successfully dethroning Keita, Colonel Assimi Goita, the now 41-year-old special forces soldier who led the coup, was installed as vice president of a transition government, and civilian Bah Ndaw as president. The joint council promised to hold elections in 18 months. However, a power struggle soon erupted between the two sides, as each attempted to wield more influence.

On May 24, 2021, Ndaw reshuffled the cabinet, removing military leaders who had been key to the August coup. Later that day, the military arrested and sent Ndaw to the military base in Kati. Hours later, Goita announced on public television that Ndaw had tried to “sabotage” the transitional government and was thus removed. He declared himself president and extended military rule to June 2022.

Goita has continued to extend the transition. This May he pushed elections to 2027, after holding a “national dialogue” – a referendum boycotted by most political parties.

Coup season

Between August 2020 and August 2024, West and Central Africa experienced at least 10 coup attempts.

Guinea

First was Guinea. On September 24, 2021, octogenarian President Alpha Conde was booted out of government by Captain Mamady Doumbouya, the then 41-year-old head of an elite Special Forces unit created by Conde. The president had caused widespread anger after he forced a constitutional change that would allow him to seek a third term in office and then cracked down brutally on protesters who were against the move. Some Guineans swarmed into the streets in celebration as news of Conde’s fall filtered out. The military is set to hand over to a civilian government by December 2024.

Burkina Faso

In Burkina Faso insecurity spilling over from Mali, its neighbour, was intensifying after the coup. Large swaths of Burkinabe territory fell to the armed groups, putting pressure on the civilian government of Roch Marc Christian Kabore. There was growing general dissatisfaction as well with France, a former colonial power, across Francophone West Africa. Although thousands of French troops deployed in Mali and Burkina Faso, insecurity remained high.

On January 24, 2022, Kabore was deposed in a coup led by then 41-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henro Damiba, an officer well-known for his success leading offensives on the front line. However insecurity levels worsened following the takeover, and the country lost 40 percent of its territory to the armed groups by 2023. The Burkinabe army also suffered huge defeats on the battlefront, causing anger in the military.

On September 30, 2022, Damiba’s government was overthrown by a group of soldiers led by then 34-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traore. In May 2024, Traore pushed elections back by five years.

Niger

On July 26, 2023, Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum was detained by top army officials led by the chief presidential guard, General Abdourahamane Tchiani. Niger shares borders with Mali and Burkina Faso and is also in the throes of an insecurity crisis. However, it is believed Tchiani was about to be relieved of his post, prompting the takeover.

Weeks before, on July 9, the regional Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) bloc had appointed Nigeria’s new President Bola Tinubu as chairman. In his speech, Tinubu promised to stop coups in the region – attempting to project stronger leadership as coup after coup appeared to shrink ECOWAS’s influence.

Tinubu convened an extraordinary meeting of West African leaders immediately after the Niger coup. ECOWAS suspended Niger, shut its borders, cut electricity and demanded that Bazoum be reinstated. All 15 countries except Cape Verde committed troops for a possible “military intervention”.

After the ECOWAS standby force was activated on August 10, hundreds in Nigeria took to the streets in protest, denouncing a possible war amid an economic crisis at home. Communities on the Nigeria-Niger border also called for dialogue. Meanwhile, Mali and Burkina Faso announced they would militarily defend Niger in the case of an ECOWAS invasion, and formed their own Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Tensions in the region eventually calmed after Tinubu soft-pedalled and ruled out an ECOWAS attack.

Gabon

Hours after early morning announcements that President Ali Bongo Ondimba had, again, won in the Central African country’s elections, the military stormed the national broadcaster on August 30, 2023. The coup, led by Brigadier General Brice Oligui Nguema, effectively ended the Bongo family’s 56-year rule. Nguema, who is also Bongo’s cousin, was installed as president of the transitional government on September 4, despite foreign condemnation of the coup. Elections are scheduled to be held in August 2025.

Failed attempts

There were two failed attempts to oust President Umaro Sissoco Embalo’s democratically elected government in Guinea Bissau. The first was in 2022. It is unclear who led the attack that was quelled by the military. The second, in December 2023, was allegedly instigated by Colonel Victor Tchongo who headed the National Guard.

In Sierra Leone, a dramatic shootout in the capital on the morning of November 26, 2023, was later confirmed to be a failed coup. It has been linked to former president Ernest Bai Koroma who is now exiled in Nigeria. His bodyguard and ex-military officer Amadu Koita was handed an 182-year sentence in July.

Military reshuffles

A day after the Gabon coup in August 2023, then-90-year-old President Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has led the country since 1982, promptly reshuffled senior military officers, installing new leaders in charge of defence, air force, navy and police divisions.

Earlier, in June 2023, Rwanda’s government announced President Paul Kagame’s dismissal of two senior commanders in the military, a day after the Minister of Defence Albert Murasira and a slew of other top officials were replaced. Two days later, the Rwandan army also announced that nearly 300 soldiers were either dismissed, sacked or had their contracts revoked. Rwandan Defence and Military spokesperson, Brigadier General Ronald Rwivanga told local journalists the affected soldiers showed “gross misconduct” like drunkenness or insubordination and that there was “no fear” of a coup.

Goodbye France, hello Russia

The multiple coups came amid growing general resentment of France in Francophone countries, where many accuse Paris of neocolonial tendencies, pointing to the widespread presence of French businesses, and the continued pegging of the common CFA currency to France’s euros, for example.

Since the takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the military governments have played up those populist feelings, casting Paris in a poor light, and severing ties. They have pressured foreign forces to leave, leading to the withdrawal of thousands of French and American troops that were once positioned across the region, helping to fight armed groups. The French military completely pulled out of the Sahel between 2022 and 2023. Bamako also demanded that a 15,000-man United Nations peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) leave last December.

Meanwhile, all three have turned to Russia for strategic support.

Hundreds of fighters from Wagner, a mercenary group now rebranded as Africa Corps, and operating as a part of the Russian government, are on the front lines in Mali and Burkina Faso. There is no evidence of Wagner fighters in Niger yet, but Niamey agreed in January to step up security cooperation with Russia.

However, insecurity levels only appear to have worsened in the countries, with the Sahel now recording surging violence levels. There have been 11,200 recorded deaths, mostly in Burkina Faso (68 percent), and triple the count from 2021, according to ACSS findings.

“Correlation is not causality,” the Africa Center’s Eizenga said, referring to the corresponding spike in deaths and violent events in the three countries trackers have recorded since 2021, the period right after the first Mali coup. “And I am not saying that the armies caused the insurgencies, but I am saying their methods are not helping, they are only making things worse.”

The United States and human rights groups have accused Wagner troops, alongside the Malian and Burkinabe armies, of gross human rights violations and targeting civilians in the strongholds of armed groups. According to research from Eizenga, more people were targeted by government troops than by the armed groups, a condition that pushes more people to join the rebel groups out of anger, he said. Media organisations have also been muzzled, opposition parties silenced and activists jailed. In Burkina Faso, government critics have been forcefully conscripted into the army.

The Russian presence in the region has prompted fears of wider conflict. In Mali, government soldiers are also targeting Tuareg separatists in the north who have long been fighting for an independent Azawad state. In a recent attack that saw several Malian soldiers and Russian troops killed, Ukraine hinted that it helped the rebels with intelligence.

“Certainly, that has always been the game plan or grand strategy of both the West and the East to attack each other’s interest on the continent,” said Festus Kofi Aubyn, a researcher with the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) in Ghana. “Once Russia has succeeded in driving away the West in the Sahel, we should expect retaliatory attacks on Russian interests as well.”

Is ECOWAS to blame?

The regional ECOWAS bloc has splintered since the AES states announced their withdrawal from the bloc in January. ECOWAS has lifted its suspensions, softened its stance and encouraged the AES states to return to the fold, but without success. Nigeria’s Tinubu, as well as several other older presidents, have even designated Senegal’s new young President Bassirou Diomaye Faye as a mediator with his fellow young “brothers”.

Experts lay much of the blame for how the region has descended into a tangled mess of coups, mercenary fighters and violence hotspots at ECOWAS’s feet. The bloc, under the previous chairmanship of Ghana’s Nana Akufo-Addo, was not firm enough after the first coup in Mali and did not immediately react with punishment strong enough to deter others, some say.

ECOWAS also failed to heavily punish civilian presidents from seeking third terms and allowed the “civilian coups” that triggered military intervention, like in the case of Guinea.

“The lack of coherent and consistent response by ECOWAS emboldened the coup-makers to act with impunity,” WANEP’s Aubyn said.