The Resurgence Of Coups In West Africa: The Need For A Paradigm Shift By The West

The latest military coup in Niger in West Africa has put the spotlight on the state of democratic governance in the region once again with the West leading the charge, while the African Union has been in tow condemning the coup and urging the soldiers to return to their barracks within 15 days!

There is no doubt that the increasing popularity of military coups in the continent has become a source of worry for the West and their enablers on the continent. Niger’s coup is the latest of a scourge in West Africa as Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso have had elected presidents overthrown in separate incidents over the past two years.

While these three West African countries remain suspended by the African Union, Sudan has collapsed into a near civil war, after an overthrow of a transitional civilian government in October 2021, followed by a split in the security forces this year on the future of the transition.

It is significant to note that military personnel are embedded in the societies of which they are members and the decisions and actions they take to intervene in politics are not bereft of the opinions of the public they serve to protect. To all intents and purposes, the African publics are gradually warming to the idea of military intervention because of their deteriorating socioeconomic circumstances.

Africans are slowly but steadily beginning to see military interventions as a silver lining or panacea to their poor socioeconomic problem because of the rapacious, mainly gerontocratic political leadership that is forced down their throat under the guise of democracy.

In fact, according to data from the Afrobarometer survey, the proportion of eligible voters who approve of military rule increased from less than one-quarter (23%) in 2015 to nearly one-third (29%) in 2023.

This is the fear that has gripped both the West and their African allies. This is the reason why President Akufo Addo of Ghana panicked and ran to the US State Department in 2022 when the Wagner mercenary forces that apparently helped engender the coup in Burkina Faso came close to Ghana’s northern border.

From the point of view of the West, as represented by France and the United States, their quick condemnation of the coup is ostensibly to defend democracy, a time-honoured mantra that motivated the Western powers to gang up against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan during the World War II.

The concern about democratic governance that has led to the condemnation of this particular coup d’etat in Niger and of course all the others before it are manifest in the words and phrases Western leaders and their African allies have employed in their characterizations of the situation in Niger so far.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has urged the “restoration of democratic order”, as a condition for the continuation of economic and military assistance to that country, while France has cut financial and security assistance to the military junta.

Meanwhile, in Africa. Kenya’s President, William Ruto, has joined the rest of the world “to condemn in the strongest terms this unconstitutional act that subverts democracy through a Coup d'etat (Italics mine) and calls for the immediate release of President Mohammed Bazoum”.

From these characterizations of the coup d’etat, the impression that is created is that there is a rolling recession of democracy on the African continent and therefore there is a need for urgent solution to this problem by all stakeholders, especially, our Western benefactors.

But democratic governance is not alien to traditional African cultures and therefore the resurgence of military coups on the continent cannot be a function of Africans’ antipathy to democratic governance; pre-colonial African governance systems were invariably democratic in nature.

Africans’ aptitude for democratic practice coupled with their primordial embrace of the free market system explains why most of the socialist central planning principles introduced by their post-independence leaders failed woefully, while in contrast the liberal democratic culture has been enjoying such an unrivalled popularity since the late 1980s on the continent.

In fact, the alacrity with which several African countries adopted and implemented the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) prescribed by the Bretton Woods institutions of the IMF and the World Bank in the early 1990s is a testament to Africans’ belief in and practice of the free market system represented by the West.

So, how does one make sense of what appears to be a disturbing return to the atavistic past of military takeovers and their concomitant political and economic instabilities on the African continent as opposed to what many expected to be Africa’s inexorable march to a future of a democratic bliss?

In my opinion, there are two overlapping explanations for this seeming recession of democracy on the African continent. Firstly, this unexpected return to the past is due to the same neo-colonial policy violence our previous colonizers and their allies perpetrated on Africans that compelled Africa’s post-independence leaders to adopt the socialist central planning as a development paradigm.

Take Niger for example. The country is one of the poorest in the world but has the largest deposit of uranium, a strategic mineral that is high in demand for the production of nuclear energy. In fact, as I write this piece, between France and the United States they have over 2,000 troops permanently based in this poor country.

Why would two great Western powers seek to base over 2,000 troops permanently in a country the majority of whose citizens lack the basic means of survival? To the majority of these people, and to others elsewhere on the continent in similar circumstances, the democracy that the West and their African allies preach to them about has become nothing but a façade for the exploitation of the resources they own.

The rule of law and human rights culture the West seeks to entrench in Africa only serve as the means through which their multinational corporations exploit Africa’s mineral resources and repatriate their profits home safely, while the indigenous owners of these resources are left destitute with the acquiescence of their African leaders.

Because the West is only concerned about the profitability of their multinational corporations, they often overlook the abuses their African allies subject their own citizens to without holding them to the same standard of democracy in the West, as long as the security forces that are the instrument of abuse, are employed to safeguard these Western investments.

Thus to many Africans, Western liberal democracy has become a zero-sum game whereby the huge Western-originated multinational corporations and local political and economic elites win at the expense of the majority of Africans who live in abject poverty.

The second reason for the resurgence of military coups on the African continent is the quality of leadership Africans have experienced in recent decades. Invariably, African publics everywhere feel disappointed in the leaders they elect through the democratic process.

To most African voters therefore, the democratization they struggled for in the 1980s and 1990s after the one-party systems in the 1960s and 1970s have not been worthwhile because the hallmarks of these so-called democratic governments have been corruption, nepotism, mediocrity, tribalism, and economic and political meltdown.

Ghana provides a good case study. Ghana became the poster boy of the new wave of democratization on the continent when, after the excesses of the military regime under J.J. Rawlings, the country transitioned to a multi-party rule under the 1992 Constitution; six successive multi-party elections have been conducted in the country since 1992.

Even though it was not flawless, the 1992 Constitution became a model for many a country in the region that had gone through similar circumstances of “undemocratic” governance. The country enjoyed relative political and economic stability until the present administration took over in 2016 when things started going south.

The country’s economy is now in shambles following reckless borrowing by the finance minister who happens to be the president’s nephew. In a clear case of conflict of interest, the finance minister’s bank benefits from this borrowing spree because his bank is the transaction advisor to the government. The incompetent management of the economy has resulted in the country returning to the IMF for a bailout for the 17^th time.

Corruption and nepotism have become the defining characteristics of the current administration as the entire government is packed with family members, friends, and people from the same ethnic group as the President much to the chagrin of the majority of the populace.

Corruption has become so prevalent under the current administration that just last week a government Minister was found with over $17 million in cash hidden in her house. You have an untenable situation in the country whereby an unelected cousin of the President is virtually the de facto Prime Minister of the country cutting deals in the millions on the blind side of government Ministers.

To reiterate, Ghana is an exemplar of the conditions that are making it attractive for military coups and indeed for groups such as the Wagner mercenaries to thrive on the African Continent. The perception that is fuelling these coups is that liberal democracy has meant the rule by a select elite and their families and friends live in opulence while the mass of the people live in abject poverty.

Truth be told, the early period of the democratization was encouraging when leaders such as Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana and a few others were in the saddle.

However, the situation is changing now because the current crop of African leaders tend to be selfish, criminals, and crooks who lie to African electorates to win elections through the “democratic” process only to come and rape the public purse they promise to protect to enrich their families and friends.

In conclusion, there is a need for a paradigm shift by the West with regards to how they engage Africa by holding the continent’s leaders to the same standard of liberal democracy as pertains in Western societies if they really want to avoid these military coups and maintain their historical ties to the continent.

Acheampong Yaw Amoateng, PhD, is a Ghanaian Emeritus Professor of Sociology based in the US.