Why is the Sahel region coup-prone?

After army officers in Niger turned against the elected president, most of the countries in Africa’s Sahel region are being led by a military officer or a former military officer, with Niger becoming the sixth African country in which the military has seized power since 2020. This has made commentators and politics analysts describe the Sahel as a coup-prone region.

Despite the conflicting definitions of the Sahel region, it is usually defined as the region in West and Central Africa with the Sahara to its north and the savanna to its south. It includes parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, southernmost Algeria, southern Niger, northernmost Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, northernmost South Sudan, Eritrea, and the far north of Ethiopia.

Commenting to Jusoor Post, Ali Al-Hajj, a journalist and expert on West Africa and the Sahel region, said there are many reasons of a diverse nature that can be used to analyze the proliferation of coups in the region.

“However, we can talk about major causes and motives, the first of which is undoubtedly poverty, poor living conditions, and unemployment, in addition to the failure of governments to limit the spread of extremist groups, and international competition over the region's wealth,” Al-Hajj said.

“The region has been under the grip and influence of France since the post-independence period and the rise of the nation-state, but recently countries like Russia and China have begun to build good relations on all military, economic and political levels,” he added.

“This was accompanied by anti-French sentiment, as the coup leaders in Mali, Burkina Faso, and recently Niger announced the reconsideration and cancellation of many bilateral agreements with France, including cultural, economic and security agreements,” he continued.

Many commentators blame ethnic and religious conflict for the proliferation of extremist groups, but other factors such as severe climate, drought and desertification, and diminishing arable land have caused a decline in economic opportunities among the region's youth.

According to a report recently issued by the United Nations, entitled “Journey to Extremism in Africa: Pathways to Recruitment and Disengagement”, the lack of income, job opportunities and livelihoods means that desperation is essentially pushing people to take up opportunities by any available means.

In Burkina Faso and Mali, the coup leaders made it clear that the government's failure to curb the spread and success of extremist groups was a major catalyst of their power grab.

In other cases, the struggle for power was the main determinant of the coup. In Sudan, which has witnessed 35 successful and unsuccessful coup attempts and plots since its independence in 1956, according to Statista, the struggle of the military and civilian elites was the main driver of coups, which are usually justified by mismanagement of the economy and the government's corruption.

The role of international powers in motivating military coups in the Sahel region is evident through several files, such as competition for the region's land resources of minerals, efforts to combat terrorism, and support for the security and military agencies to stop migration flows to the coasts of North Africa.