When they came to power in coups in 2020, 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Malian, Burkinabe, and Nigerien juntas made many promises that seemed to seduce the majority of their populations devastated by years of economic mismanagement and nepotism; suffering; and insecurity and instability due to jihadist insurgency and bad governance.
Many citizens, particularly youth, initially celebrated the takeovers, responding to promises by junta leaders to do what civilian governments had failed to do, namely, create stability by containing jihadist insurgencies and violence. Juntas’ promises to regain sovereignty from their former colonial rulers, for example, by expelling French troops from the region. Anti-Western and anti-French rhetoric has received wide popular support.
On the ground, meanwhile, public opinion on the military takeovers is more nuanced as the coup leaders fail to improve livelihoods or reduce insecurity and political instability. The three countries also lost critical financial assistance following the suspension of Western development aid and budget support, which, despite post-colonial rhetoric, helped to create thousands of local jobs.
“Life has become unbearable in Niger. The price of most basic products continues to rise. The junta has betrayed us,” 25-year-old Ali told Africa in Fact. Prior to the coup, he worked as a technician in a company that benefited from French financial assistance. “The project stopped abruptly because the French suspended their aid and left. I’ve come to Benin to find any kind of job to feed my family.”
For decades, Benin, a “modestly democratic” country, has served as a shelter for thousands of sub-Saharan Africans fleeing political persecution, violence, poverty, hunger, and unemployment in their countries.
France’s development and budget support for Niger stood at $130 million in 2022, while Mali received $490 million in French development aid between 2013 and 2017, according to the French Development Agency (AFD).
Disgruntled Malians are singing the same song of betrayal, hunger, rising violence, human rights violations, and faded hopes. “The situation is getting worse in Mali. What these generals do all day is blame France and the West and, at the same time, pump millions of dollars of our hard-earned money to Russian mercenaries,” Maiga, 30, said from Cotonou, Benin’s economic capital.
Mali’s ruling junta has paid nearly $1 billion to Russian mercenaries since 2021 to eradicate terrorist and separatist groups and restore stability, according to Africa Defence Forum (ADF) magazine, which is published quarterly by the US Africa Command.
Maiga added that he had no choice but to look for any type of job in Benin because “Mali is no longer what it used to be”. “Frankly, we thought that the military would do better, but they failed,” he said. “Everything is expensive, and power outages have become frequent, while terrorists are wreaking havoc everywhere. In addition, intelligence services are kidnapping people every day for no valid reason.”
Ali’s and Maiga’s testimonies demonstrate the anger and disappointment caused by the central Sahel junta’s failure to meet their people’s expectations and restore hope.
Sophie Desmidt, peace and security analyst at the European Centre for Policy Development Management (ECDPM), agreed that the Sahelian juntas had made promises they could not realistically fulfil. “They have mostly relied on coercion, nationalist rhetoric and external security partnerships, while doing less to address the deeper governance and social contract issues that allowed armed groups and public frustration to grow in the first place,” she told Africa in Fact from the Netherlands.
“And then, security has not improved in any structural sense, but rather violence has intensified or spread, while humanitarian needs and displacement remain severe.”
More than three million are internally displaced by conflict in the three countries, including over 400,000 in Mali, more than 500,000 in Niger and 2.1 million in Burkina Faso, according to the UN. Worse, the central Sahel has received less money for its current humanitarian response amid global funding cuts.
However, Desmidt said it would be prudent not to frame the crisis solely as a failure of the junta. “They came to power in countries already facing deep structural problems: insecurity, weak state presence outside capitals, poverty, corruption, contested governance, youth grievances, but also climate change and extreme weather event pressures, and a long-standing crisis of trust between citizens and political elites.”
Nevertheless, she pointed out that they may also have deepened some of them by militarising governance, suppressing dissent, delaying real transitions, and treating security as a substitute for politics.
The three military-led governments have long compromised the return to constitutional rule by, among other things, suspending political parties, scrapping existing constitutions, replacing the parliament with a group of loyal men and women who support their anti-Western and autocratic ideology, and indefinitely postponing the general elections.
On April 2 this year, Burkinabe junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré said on state TV that his people “need to forget about democracy because it is not for us”. In addition, repression has risen, with hundreds of political prisoners, including journalists, civil society members, outspoken social media influencers, former government officials, and opposition figures, reportedly in jail.
In mid-April, Burkina Faso also dissolved 118 NGOs and associations and banned their activities, a decision described by Amnesty International as a “flagrant attack on the right to freedom of association”.
The same month, Niger’s military government announced that it had banned 2,900 out of 4,700 registered local and foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and development agencies, accusing them of a lack of transparency and even supporting terrorists that were destabilising the Sahel.
Asked if a coup can ever be “democratic” if it reflects popular frustration, Desmidt argued that governance failures and public disillusionment had created an enabling environment for what some call “popular coups”. However, she warned that calling them “democratic” risked “legitimising military rule and overlooking what tends to follow and what we are clearly seeing now: longer transitions, shrinking civic space, repression, and an entrenchment of new authoritarian systems”.
Nevertheless, she said the grievances behind the coups should be taken seriously. “Clearly, people were frustrated with insecurity, corruption, poverty, electoral manipulation, leaders staying too long in power, and partnerships with external actors that many perceived as unequal or ineffective.” But she added, “Even where people initially welcome it, they usually have few tools to hold the new rulers accountable afterwards.”
Despite the junta’s failings, it still enjoys support on the street, with an ECDPM February 2024 report noting that a perception held by both citizens and military leaders is that the partnership between ‘democratically’ elected leaders and Western allies is not only asymmetrical but also exploitative.
“What we are seeing is more than a short-term interruption,” Desmidt said. “It reflects a deeper crisis of legitimacy in African governance systems and in the regional and continental norms designed to protect constitutional rule.” She said while the African Union’s “zero tolerance” to coups principle remained normatively important, it was increasingly reactive and insufficient.
“Suspension after a coup is still necessary, probably, but it does not prevent coups. It also does not address ‘constitutional coups’, third termism, manipulated elections, repression, or the slow erosion of democratic institutions by elected leaders. This, of course, creates perceptions of double standards.”
Desmidt pointed out that the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, has historically been more active than the AU on governance in West Africa, with stronger regional tools, including sanctions, mediation, election observation, judicial mechanisms and, in some cases, threats or use of force.
“The Niger coup exposed this clearly. ECOWAS reacted forcefully, including sanctions and the threat of military intervention, but this also fuelled a backlash, strengthened the juntas’ anti-ECOWAS and anti-Western narratives, and contributed to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger consolidating their own Alliance of Sahel States.” ECOWAS’s influence was waning, she said, while the AU had been largely absent in the Sahel context.
“So, the difference with the AU is that ECOWAS has been more operational and politically exposed, while the AU has been more norm-setting but less visible and less effective in shaping outcomes on the ground. Though now both probably face the same dilemma: how to defend constitutional order without appearing to defend discredited other members or a status quo that many citizens no longer trust.”
Daniel Phiri is a freelance journalist, who has travelled extensively across Africa, including having lived a worked as a journalist in South Africa for 18 years until moving to Dakar, Senegal in 2012.
