Africa at a crossroads as more democracies fall to military coups, experts say

LONDON -- In the wee hours of the morning, a group of men dressed in military uniform appear on state television and claim to have seized power from a president whose family has controlled the country for decades.

It's a scene that played out most recently in Gabon in August but has become all too familiar in this part of Africa, a vast region known as the "coup belt" with a continuous chain of military rulers stretching from coast to coast.

There have been at least a dozen coup d'états in West and Central Africa since 2020, with eight proving successful while the others failed or spiraled into conflict. The driving factors are complex and varied, but experts seemed to agree that Africa is at a crossroads of sorts. Will more democracies on the world's second-largest continent fall victim to military takeovers, or will they heed the deafening calls for better governance?

The coup in Gabon happened just hours after President Ali Bongo Ondimba won reelection for a third term in a vote that was criticized by international observers. The coup leaders immediately placed Bongo under house arrest for a week. He had become president of the oil-rich Central African nation in 2009 following the death of his father, who had ruled since 1967.

About a month earlier, a military junta in Niger ousted the West African country's democratically elected government. Before that, there were two successful coups in Burkina Faso, one in Guinea, one in Chad and two in Mali -- and those are just within the last three years. Gabon's marks the 100th successful coup in post-colonial Africa, according to Issaka K. Souaré, the author of a book on coups in West Africa and a lecturer at General Lansana Conté University at Sonfonia in Conakry, Guinea.

"This surely renders vulnerable most other governments to military coups, including military regimes born out of coups, as seen in Burkina Faso," Souaré told ABC News. "It could also lead some to improve their governance practices and where they thought of manipulating constitutions to stay in power, perhaps renounce such plans."

Just this week, Burkina Faso's military junta announced it had thwarted "a proven coup attempt."

In 2021 after a military takeover in Sudan, which has since erupted into an ongoing power struggle between the two main factions of the military regime, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres assailed what he called "an epidemic of coup d'états." There is now growing concern of a "domino effect" as coups spread across West and Central Africa, according to Bamidele Olajide, a lecturer in political science at the University of Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria.

"Coups are generally contagious as a successful coup in a country emboldens would-be coup plotters in neighboring countries, especially where the social, economic and political situations are similar," Olajide told ABC News. "This has proven to be the case over history on the continent and the new spate of coups are not in any way different."

Military juntas often cite a number of reasons for intervening and overthrowing a regime, including political corruption and economic hardship. But the most relevant factor behind coups in sub-Saharan Africa historically is poor institutional performance, while the failure of elected governments to tackle jihadist violence in the Sahel region has been a key trigger for the takeovers in West and Central Africa since 2020, according to Carlos Garcia-Rivero, an associate professor in politics at the University of Valencia in Valencia, Spain, and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University's Centre for International and Comparative Politics in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

"When governments do not run countries as expected, citizens will welcome the military to intervene," Garcia-Rivero told ABC News. "The citizenry's response was to go on the street and welcome the military coup, which has spread the idea that it is legitimate to overcome a government when they do not perform as expected."

That was seen most recently in Gabon and Niger, where throngs of people took to the streets of the respective capital cities to celebrate the coups. Pro-junta demonstrators also gathered outside the French embassies in Libreville and Niamey. Both Niger and Gabon have close ties to France, their former colonizer, as do Burkina Faso and Mali. Niger has also been a key ally to the United States and other Western nations in the fight against Islamist militants in the Sahel.

"Some developed nations have aided inept and corrupt leaders to stay in power, which is why recent coups have enjoyed the popular support," Olajide said. "For the United States and its allies, the stance of Africans against neocolonial tendencies and pressures is palpable."

"Future coups are likely to dwell more on anti-imperialist rhetoric and stance," he added. "The U.S. and its allies need to change their exploitative mode of engagement with Africa, because the renegade military personnel are using it to upend the democratic process on the continent."

In recent years, military juntas in West and Central Africa have "latched onto resentment against France ... as a tool for the justification of their coups and legitimation in power," according to Olajide.

"The people now see the military as a messiah," he said, "and only time will tell if they are indeed."

However, as Souaré noted, a report released this year by the United Nations Development Programme found that the apparent popular support for recent coups in Africa has been "transient" and does not mean a rejection of democracy, but rather a call for better democratic governance.

"People have taken to the streets to cheer for change in a context of deeply felt, expanding and yet frustrated democratic yearning," the UNDP report stated.

The African Union, ECOWAS and other regional blocs currently lack a "clear legal instrument" to deal with leaders on the continent who seek to change the constitution in order to stay in power for longer. This, in turn, has lead these organizations to lose credibility and trust in the eyes of the public, according to Souaré.

"As a consequence, where their threats helped to deter would-be coup-makers in the 2000s, which saw dwindling trends of coups until 2020, this is no longer the case," he said.

Nevertheless, Garcia-Rivero warned that "Gabon will not be the last" African country to fall into the hands of a military junta.

"I would keep an eye on Togo or Chad," he said. "And If I were [Zimbabwe's President Emmerson] Dambudzo Mnangagwa, I would keep an eye on my back."