Since 2024, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have experienced more than eight coup attempts. This points to a deeper crisis in which poor governance, anti-western sentiment, insecurity, and corruption are key drivers of the transition from democratic to autocratic rule. While all these military juntas claim to seek to restore stability in the region, a very different scenario seems to be at play: a hold on power and the limitation of both political and civil freedoms.
There are three interrelated points I seek to make in examining shifting patterns of violence in the Sahel. The first is that the conditions that produced these coups were a direct result of structural governance failures that neither civilian governments nor international partners meaningfully addressed. The second is that the military juntas sought to replace weak governments, but they, too, are failing to address the underlying drivers of instability while severely limiting civil liberties. Finally, I seek to address the problem of the so-called “coup season”.
The governmental crises within these three countries cannot be understood without reference to the historical legacies of French colonialism. The continent’s history of colonialism and arbitrary borders has left a legacy of deep-rooted ethnic, religious, and territorial conflicts. These states formed part of French West Africa, a colonial administrative framework designed around resource extraction rather than the development of local administrative capacity.
The French civilising mission (mission civilisatrice) imposed artificial boundaries that divided existing ethnic communities. These boundaries created and entrenched ethnic tensions, with the colonial administration governing through transactional alliances with local elites, effectively co-opting traditional authority structures to serve colonial extraction rather than community governance. This pattern of elite co-opting was the foundation for established neo-patrimonial networks.
The resurgence of coups from 2012 has been well-documented around three main challenges: the corruption of state institutions; the inability of security forces to contain Jihadist insurgent attacks, as well as other non-state actor conflicts that include ethnic farmer-herder conflicts; and the marginalisation of ethnic communities that live along the periphery of these states.
Corruption represents perhaps the most corrosive factor; in Mali, for example, an estimated 44% of development assistance received between 2005 and 2017 was irregularly spent by government institutions, according to Human Rights Watch. This systematic diversion of resources from the public purpose to elite patronage networks directly impacts state capacity, leaving rural communities without functioning infrastructure and services and with ongoing insecurity.
The rise in Jihadist insurgency has been the result. Rural communities in Mali and Burkina Faso have become receptive to Jihadist forms of governance for two main reasons: the violence employed by insurgents has forced many rural communities to support and protect these groups out of fear of being attacked, and there is an expectation that these groups could “purify the region from all the sins allegedly brought by democracy”.
The effects of climate change, particularly in Burkina Faso, have also depleted scarce resources, intensifying competition and conflict between communities. As a result of these challenges, military juntas that seize power position themselves as correctives to specific governance failures. In Mali, the August 2020 coup led by Colonel Assimi Goïta and the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP) was the direct culmination of public protests over the contested parliamentary elections of March 2020, widespread government corruption, and the state’s failure to contain the jihadist insurgency in the north and centre of the country.
The military junta governing Burkina Faso is particularly concerning, as transitional timelines towards democracy have repeatedly been extended. When Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s promised transition deadline of July 2024 approached, the military government convened a national dialogue that most political parties boycotted, producing a new transitional charter that extended Traoré’s presidency until 2029 and granted him permission to contest future elections, transforming what was meant to be a transitional arrangement into consolidated power.
Similarly, the media have faced restrictions, and civil society organisations have been banned and intimidated, strengthening the authoritarian regime. The media and civil society have suffered the most severe consequences of these measures. Four journalists abducted in June and July 2024 were forcibly conscripted into the military, and in March 2025, three prominent journalists who opposed press freedom restrictions forcibly disappeared. They later reappeared in social media videos wearing military uniforms.
While hopes of military rule as the answer to the challenges in the Sahel persist, what is unfolding is a democratic crisis that has resulted in even more instability, with no signs of a transition towards democracy, deepening instead an authoritarian regime characterised by the constant threat of coups. Security has deteriorated under military rule. In Mali, insurgent attacks continued to escalate following the coups, creating another layer to the governance crisis.
Further exacerbating the crisis, Mali’s and Burkina Faso’s decision to expel French forces and pivot towards Russia has complicated the security landscape. The Wagner Group and its successor, the Russian African Corps, arrived not only with mercenaries but also with a business model: payment in the form of mining concessions. Wagner’s involvement in Malian gold mining has fuelled conflict between armed groups competing for control of lucrative extraction sites, entrenching a war economy.
A central argument of this article is that the Sahel coups were predictable, not in their precise timing, but in their structural inevitability. Weak institutions, corrupt governance, and a growing security crisis may have created a perfect environment for coups, but how they have entrenched their power remains poorly understood, making it difficult to determine how to mitigate these conditions. Both local and institutional blocs, such as ECOWAS, have paid particular attention to mitigating rising insecurity within the region but have not paid sufficient attention to the fundamental governance crisis.
Improvements in state institutions, fair resource distribution, and the representation of marginalised communities are key areas that need to be addressed, as does the prioritisation of local governance that gives communities a genuine stake in state legitimacy. The international community’s approach in the Sahel was too often to prioritise counterterrorism operations over governance reform, treating the security crisis as a military problem rather than a political one.
Therefore, the future of effective warning systems needs to be modelled on an approach that invests in local governance structures accountable to rural communities, addresses the climate-driven resource conflicts that fuel inter-communal violence, and engages honestly with the colonial and neo-colonial economic arrangements that have perpetuated underdevelopment. It also requires building early warning systems grounded not only in security metrics but also in governance indicators, such as corruption levels, service delivery gaps, ethnic marginalisation, and institutional trust. More importantly, military powers must be checked, and the transition back to democratic governance needs to take precedence to improve the region.
Ultimately, effective early-warning mechanisms and stabilisation strategies require a fundamental shift away from security-first frameworks towards governmental and institutional reforms that will shape the path to long-lasting stability.
