How Africa Lost 8 Democracies in 5 Years
Inside the deadly pattern connecting ballot boxes to regime change
On an October morning in 2025, Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo woke to the rumble of armored vehicles rolling through empty streets. Soldiers occupied the presidential palace and state broadcaster as residents stayed indoors, uncertain whether this was another political spasm or something more permanent. Within hours, the answer was clear: Colonel Michael Randrianirina appeared on national television in crisp fatigues, announcing the removal of civilian leadership and promising elections within 18 to 24 months.
Madagascar’s coup was the eighth successful military takeover on the continent since 2020, joining a collapsing domino effect that now includes: Mali (twice), Guinea, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso (twice), Niger, Gabon, and Guinea-Bissau. When Guinea-Bissau fell to its own coup just weeks later in November—three days after a controversial general election—as well as a failed attempt just shortly after in Benin, the pattern became impossible to ignore: Africa is experiencing its most intense period of military takeovers since the Cold War’s end, heightening fragility in already the world’s most politically fragile continent.
The question for onlookers is simple: what’s driving this surge in military takeovers across the Sahel?
The Electoral Trigger
While hailed as the foundation for democracy, elections in unstable states don’t reduce coup risk; they often precipitate it.
The mechanism is clear in recent cases. Mali’s 2020 coup followed legislative elections, in which several “corruption scandals” surrounded then President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Guinea’s 2021 takeover came after President Alpha Condé engineered a constitutional change allowing himself a third term, then won an election the opposition rejected as fraudulent. And Guinea-Bissau’s 2025 coup erupted when rival presidential candidates both declared victory, exposing the electoral process as theater rather than resolution.
This isn’t democracy failing to prevent coups. This is elections themselves becoming coup triggers when they’re perceived by the military and the public as rigged competitions rather than legitimate arbiters of power.
The Conflict Multiplier
But electoral dysfunction alone doesn’t explain the geography of this coup belt. The strongest statistical predictor identified in the 2023 analysis was ongoing armed conflict, and most of these takeovers have occurred in countries already at war with themselves.
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger all faced active jihadist insurgencies when their militaries seized power (and continue to endure such violence). Chad was navigating succession after its longtime ruler died in combat against rebels. Sudan’s coup occurred amid simmering tensions that would later explode into civil war. In each case, protracted conflict had prompted a return to military governance.
This is the “conflict trap” in action: a self-reinforcing cycle where insurgency leads to militarization, militarization leverages civilian frustration, and weakened regimes become vulnerable to intervention. The coup then deepens instability, creating conditions for the next seizure of power.
Burkina Faso illustrates this dynamic with brutal clarity. The country experienced two coups in 2022 alone, the second justified by governmental failure to contain jihadist violence. Rather than breaking the cycle, military rule became part of it, with each set of officers promising the security their predecessors couldn’t deliver.
Beyond the Coup Belt
The underlying conditions driving these military takeovers extend far beyond the confines of ECOWAS nations. Even traditionally stable states, such as Ghana and Nigeria, are vulnerable to the very factors upending civilian rule in West Africa, escalating tensions in already volatile environments.
Until African states can address the underlying conditions that provoke instability, the pattern will repeat, and with it, the fire of chaos grows to new heights and expands into new borders.
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