At the beginning of the second decade of the millennium, democracy seemed to be a final victory in Africa. The winds brought what NATO ships and Western powers craved; Colonel Gaddafi's regime fell in Libya in October 2011. However, conventional wisdom has shown that you cannot claim victory as long as you cannot anticipate the consequences of your actions.
The fall of the Gaddafi regime was a rope stretched by Western regimes to stifle their interests on the African continent, and this was the paradox that think tanks failed to predict, as even rogue regimes play a role in stabilizing the international environment.
Contrary to popular belief, the crisis of African coups began in early 2012. The leakage of the Qaddafi regime's weapons into the Sahel was greater than the fragile regimes could bear, and the effects of that collapse began to be felt rapidly.
In March 2012, the deteriorating security situation in Mali led to the first military coup against elected President Amadou Touré, beginning a wave of coups that would later lead to the region's designation of a "coup belt" similar to the earthquake belt.
This wave began in Mali in 2012, 2020and 2021, Guinea,Chad andSudan in 2021, two coups in Burkina Faso in 2022, Niger last July, and finally in Gabon in August 2023.
It seems that Africa is returning to its original path, and the dreams of democracy are collapsing, in contrast to the historic rise of the strongman theory, which will fill the African land with justice after being exhausted by poverty, conflict, and corruption.
The masses in more than one African country came out welcoming the coups and questioning the usefulness of democracy. What made Africa return the time machine to its original course after a decade in which democracy rose at the expense of authoritarianism?
Why did fascism return?
Several factors played a role in the decline of democracy and the rise of fascist and coup trends in Africa, including three internal factors and an external factor.
The first of these factors is the government's lack of legitimacy due to its inability to deliver and the failure of African governments to improve the lives of citizens, making their legitimacy even more fragile. The economic crisis in the Sahel and West Africa intensified after the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, which raised the prices of cereals and food in an unprecedented manner.
It is now estimated that the number of people living in extreme poverty in Africa has exceeded 430 million. The average age of her children is 18.8 years. This makes Africa a young continent where competition for employment and resources increases.
Second, democracy – as a tool for managing conflict and transforming it into a peaceful competition for changing politics, rather than rigid racial or ethnic affiliations – has emerged in Africa as an ethnic practice incapable of changing the structure of society based on primary affiliations.
In various cases, ethnicity played a crucial role in guiding voters. Ethnic conflicts have also been fertile ground for the spread of armed violence in more than one country, undermining the ability of elected Governments to deliver public services.
Ethnic conflict has sometimes led Governments to use ethnic militias to quell the insurgency and secure political support, as in the cases of Mali and Sudan.
The inability of Africa's nascent democracy to fight, and sometimes even protect, corruption adds a third factor that ultimately led to the decline of democracy.
According to a survey conducted in 19 African countries, 6 out of 10 respondents said that corruption is increasing in their countries, which means that democracy, which has emerged as a tool of accountability and balance, has become a tool to support corruption, especially if it is linked to the political favoritism practiced by officials to ensure the loyalty of local leaders.
The manifestations of political corruption of the leaders themselves varied, and this extended to changing the rules of rotation of power to prolong the rule, which caused the opposition to lose opportunities for peaceful change. Guinean President Alpha Condé, the country's first elected president,was ousted after passing a new constitution allowing him to run indefinitely.
In Gabon, President Ali Bongo's family used the constitution and rigged elections to consolidate their control over the government so that the president who turned against him suffered a stroke that partially paralyzed him, but he nevertheless held power and held elections of questionable integrity, which earned the coup against him great popularity.
Democracy in Africa looks like someone who preys on itself from within.
Besides the three internal factors, there is a fourth factor related to the role of the West, which seems to be losing the war of narratives. Africa has emerged as a backyard for conflict between Russia and China on the one hand and the West on the other. While the West presented democracy as a complex system with well-developed institutions, Russia presented an alternative simple model based on strongman rule.
Although Russia's project is exploitative, based on the looting of mining wealth in exchange for security services and protection for loyal coup regimes, Moscow has been able to create a positive image of it in Africa.
As anti-French and anti-Western sentiment escalated in 2021, an anonymous, French-speaking network was founded on social media platforms under the name of Rososphere, aimed at propaganda for Russia and presenting it as a friend of Africa. Tracing the source of the network, it turned out that behind its establishment was a pro-Russian Belgian named Luc Michel.
The West lost the war of novels altogether after the Russian war on Ukraine. That war showed great Western interest and a huge media and political campaign in support of Ukraine, an interest that was not present with the same force in African and Third World issues.
African public opinion felt that the "white man" issues were the most favored in the corridors of Western governments.
Do coups work?
Democracy appears in a real decline; it may last for some time. But will the retreat continue, and the coups deliver their promises? Is Africa really liberated as fascist propaganda does? The straightforward, easy answer is no.
This is not predictive or wishful thinking; it is a shortened answer based on a review of the record of achievements of recent coups.
In Mali, civilian casualties after the coup increased by 270 percent. In Burkina Faso, the coup lost more territory, having lost 40 percent of the country under rebel control. The systematic looting of African resources has increased with the change of beneficiary country, as Russia has based its project on the continent on supporting loyalist militias and regimes that help it in the systematic exploitation of resources.
In general, coups fail to deliver on their long-term promises, and matters become more complicated as "strongmen" remain in power for long periods after destroying all means of accountability and controlling power.
Democracy is ultimately a human product, not an exclusive product of the West. It aims to ensure the greatest degree of governance while remaining under surveillance and accountability and falls into errors developed by practice. Despite all their problems, African democracies are achieving higher levels of development and public service delivery. Its real crisis is attempts to undermine it either from internal forces or external influences..
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