Jihadist Violence and Military Resurgence: The Crisis of Fragile Democratisation in Africa

In just over six months in 2021, coups made a rude comeback in Sudan, Mali, Chad, and Guinea. The coups in Sudan and Mali came from previous military power grabs in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Thus, in about three years, six coups had been experienced in the four sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. A few years ago, the coup bug had caught up with Egypt and Zimbabwe. Most of these countries were navigating democratic transitions. However, these violent takeovers of power are fuelling pessimism that Africa is going back to the bad old days when the continent had a notoriety for a high frequency of coups.

These forceful takeovers of power further deepen social instability, corruption, human rights violations, and mass poverty on the continent. Besides these abnormalities, coups are highly contagious because they can sometimes trigger more coups in the country where they occur and sometimes in neighbouring states. As a result of these terrible consequences, this edition of Nextier Policy Weekly examines how fragile democratisation and waves of jihadist violence are impelling coups on the continent.

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