The Coup Belt: Understanding West Africa's Wave of Military Takeovers

Since 2020, West and Central Africa has experienced six successful military coups: Mali (twice), Guinea, Burkina Faso (twice), Niger, and Gabon. The geography of the "Coup Belt" — a band of countries stretching from the Atlantic to the Sahel — is reshaping the political map of the continent. Understanding why requires looking beyond the democratic framework.

The Pattern

Each coup followed a period of sustained popular frustration with civilian governments. In Burkina Faso, President Roch Kaboré was overthrown after years of failure to contain Islamist insurgency despite a decade of military support from France and the United States. In Niger, President Bazoum — widely regarded as a competent technocrat — was removed after his government's approach to the security crisis was judged inadequate by the military. The pattern is not: military seizes power for its own benefit. The pattern is: military seizes power with significant civilian support as an expression of accumulated frustration.

The France Problem

Each of the Sahel coups was accompanied by anti-French sentiment of unusual intensity. Operation Barkhane — France's decade-long counterterrorism mission in the region — had failed to pacify the insurgency despite thousands of troops and billions of euros. The coups were partly referendums on France's presence, and the new military governments have expelled French forces and invited Russian Wagner Group advisors as their most visible foreign policy acts.

What Comes Next

The military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have formed a new security alliance — the Alliance of Sahel States — and announced their withdrawal from ECOWAS. Whether this represents a durable realignment or a temporary rupture depends heavily on whether the new governments can actually improve security conditions, something that has eluded their predecessors for a decade.