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Africa’s appetite for coups grows as military leaders strengthen their grip
The 2020s have been a busy time for military coups in Africa.
University of Kentucky political scientists Jonathan Powell, who specialises in the study of political instability, and Professor Clayton Thyne, whose research focuses on domestic conflict and coups d’état, said there were 13 attempted coups in Africa in the years 2021 to 2023.
Powell says eight of those coups succeeded – in Chad, Mali, Guinea and Sudan in 2021, two separate coups in Burkina Faso in 2022, one on 23 January of that year and another on 30 September, and in Niger and Gabon in 2023..
The remaining five coups failed: in Niger and Sudan in 2021, in Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe in 2022 and in Sudan in 2023. In the latter, the military rulers who had seized power in 2021 continued to run the war-torn country.
Where the military have been successful in taking control, the army generals leading the coups have since shown no appetite for a return to civilian rule despite promising to do so when they took control..
Two of the coup leaders – Chad’s military leader Mahamat Idriss Déby, who seized power in 2021,and Gabon’s General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema who masterminded a coup in 2023 – have since held disputed elections in an attempt to give their rule a measure of legitimacy. In May 2024, Déby swept the presidential polls with more than 60% of the vote while Nguema won with 90% of the vote in April this year.
The effects of these coups have been devastating: brutal repression marked by arbitrary detentions, torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings to stifle political dissent.
There has also been corruption, erosion of free speech and strained relations with neighbouring countries or former colonial powers in some instances.
Promises to restore security, revitalise the economy or champion the will of the people that were invariably given as a motivation to seize power have been substituted by measures to entrench the rule of the military dictatorships.
Powell said the wave of coups have a common thread, a reluctance to relinquish power and erosion of rights such as free speech.
“The big takeaway is that previously coup leaders or the armed forces typically retreated from power, and often very quickly. This has radically shifted since 2021. Since then, all coups have seen the coup leaders remain in power,” he told Index.
“The coups since 2021 occurred within varying contexts, but major commonalities are other forms of domestic instability, civil war, violence, political manipulation and governments’ loss of legitimacy in the eyes of their people even with [previously] elected leaders “
In those countries where coups have seen the de facto establishment of military rule, freedoms in general are suffering, with journalists and media freedom in particular coming under attack.
“We have seen the arbitrary arrest of journalists in different countries, while Mali’s junta has attempted to virtually ban political coverage altogether,” Powell added.
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Gabon offer a study in how military rulers are corrupted by power, becoming worse or more brutal than the regimes they overthrew.
Mali’s transitional military government, which seized power in May 2021, announced that scheduled elections would be delayed indefinitely for technical reasons.
The military government also suspended political parties, a development the human rights watchdog said violates both Malian law and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly under international human rights law.
Human Rights Watch also said that Mali’s council of ministers has adopted a decree directing all media to stop “broadcasting and publishing the activities” of political parties and associations.
In the case of Burkina Faso, coup leader Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damaogo Damiba became interim president in January 2022 but was ousted by Captain Ibrahim Traoré in a subsequent coup nine months later.
Traoré pledged to restore the civilian government by 1 July 2024 but last year he extended the transition period by another five years, adding that he would be eligible to contest the elections.
In Gabon, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the country is on track to swap one form of autocratic governance with another. The military regime of Brigadier General Brice Oligui Nguema, who seized power in a coup on 30 August 2023, has instituted a “sequence of actions to pave an unobstructed pathway to claim the presidency” in upcoming elections.
This includes appointing loyalists to two-thirds of the Senate and National Assembly, appointing all nine members of the Constitutional Court, hosting a tightly scripted national dialogue process in mid-2024, from which 200 political parties were banned and rewriting of the constitution to allow members of the military to contest political office, and extend presidential terms to seven years.
An activist from Niger, Dr Mayra Djibrine, told Index that since the July 2023 coup in her country led by General Abdourahamane Tiani, there has been a rise in arbitrary arrests and detentions of political opponents, activists, and journalists.
Djibrine said while military leaders may justify coups as necessary measures to restore order or combat corruption, history has shown that military governance often leads to prolonged instability.
She said the military leaders in Niger have announced their intentions to transition to civilian rule but have not specified a concrete timeline for elections but given the uncertainty and historical precedents in the region, skepticism remains about how soon Niger will revert to a stable civilian government.
“The military regime has imposed restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, accompanied by heightened surveillance and censorship of media outlets critical of the government. Additionally, ongoing insecurity due to extremist violence in certain regions has further complicated the human rights landscape. Humanitarian access has also been limited in some areas, worsening the plight of those in need,” said Djibrine.
“Freedom of speech in Niger is facing significant challenges in the wake of the coup. While there was some degree of media freedom prior to the coup, the current military government has implemented measures that stifle dissent and control public discourse. Journalists are often subjected to intimidation, harassment, and detention for reporting critically on the regime. Access to independent media has been increasingly limited, and public protests against the government are met with a strong repressive response. This environment has led to self-censorship, diminishing the space for open dialogue and critical expression.”
She said to prevent coups throughout Africa, several approaches could be considered that include building robust democratic institutions that ensure citizen representation and accountability can help reduce discontent and the likelihood of military takeovers.
She said this involves not only conducting credible elections but also promoting transparency within the government.
She said there is also a need to strengthen the role of civil society organisations to enhance public engagement and create mechanisms for citizens to collaboratively voice their concerns, thus reducing disillusionment with political systems.
“Reforming security forces to ensure they operate under civilian authority and focus on national defense rather than political ambitions is crucial. Prioritising military professionalism is essential for building trust between civilians and the armed forces,” she said.
In July 2023, as the world was witnessing an uptick in coups in African countries, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report titled Soldiers and Citizens: Military Coups and the Need for Democratic Renewal in Africa as part of its partnership with the African Union Commission which offered insights into what fuels coups in Africa.
The report said readily exploitable grievances, linked to African leaders’ failures to deliver inclusive development as they rule behind a façade of democracy while deploying innately exclusionary models of governance has created fertile ground for coups to be staged on the continent.
It said there is a correlation between heightened coup risk and stagnant growth, exclusionary economic governance, multidimensional poverty, inequality, reduced youth and women’s participation, governance deficits, among others.
The findings confirm that coup risk can be viewed as a subset of state fragility. Countries that experience contemporary coups perform poorly on global development indices. These rankings are not abstract, but represent millions of lives marred by exclusion, infringement of rights, restriction of opportunity and frustration. These grievances create a base of frustration that coup leaders can readily exploit,” the report said.
Nick Watts, the vice president of EuroDefence UK told Index that the countries affected by coups have been courted by China and Russia who are playing on anti-colonial sentiment.
He said a Russian proxy, the Wagner Group, has been providing the means of removing governments deemed too close to their former colonial masters.
Watts said Wagner has continued operating in the region even after the death of its former powerful leader Yevgeny Prigozhin.
He offered an explanation on why these coups have taken place.
“The regimes have been seen as out of touch, which has played into the hands of ‘liberation’ movements,” he said.
The desire for power in Africa has not diminished.
In May 2024, a failed coup took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo while other African dictators, such as Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé who ruled the country from 2005 after he was installed by the army when his autocratic father Gnassingbé Eyadéma died, changed the constitution to prolong his rule. Gnassingbé, whose family has ruled the country for nearly six decades, was sworn into a new post of President of the Council of Ministers which has no official term limits, a move which sparked deadly protests.
While the 2020s have been a particularly fertile period for coups in Africa, it continues a historical precedent. The UNDP report says there have been 98 coups in Africa between 1952 and 2022, more than one a year.
The report’s authors said that to mitigate coup risk, African governments must strive to deliver better governance, deepen democracy and inclusive development.
It called on regional and international actors to engage proactively with countries where presidents are nearing the end of their term limits to secure public assurances that they will resign and allow for a peaceful transfer of power. History tells us that Africa’s military leaders are unlikely to listen.
Annabel Sowemimo on the silent killer in the NHS
This article first appeared in Volume 54, Issue 1 of our print edition of Index on Censorship, titled The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system, published on 11 April 2025. Read more about the issue here.
For those regularly subjected to racial discrimination, it can be exhausting to encourage people without this firsthand experience to see things from their perspective. Convincing others that certain behaviours or attitudes are harmful can be frustrating, difficult and ultimately lead to hostility – and nowhere more so than within large organisations, where prejudice may be deeply embedded.
The National Health Service (NHS) is one of the UK’s most loved and largest institutions, employing more people than any other organisation in the country. But, as a result, it is not exempt from societal issues.
Institutional racism within the NHS, impacting both staff and patients, has been well documented. A report compiled last year by Middlesex University and the charity Brap found that “racial prejudice remains embedded in the health service despite initiatives to remove it”.
The NHS has failed to “provide a safe and effective means for listening to and dealing with concerns” raised by Black and minority ethnic (BME) staff, and it noted a “culture of avoidance, defensiveness or minimisation of the issue from their employer if they did so”.
Nearly three-quarters of UK- trained staff had complained of race discrimination, according to the study. A survey commissioned by the membership body NHS Confederation in 2022 also reported that more than half of its surveyed BME NHS leaders had considered leaving in the three years beforehand as a result of racist treatment they had experienced while doing their jobs. Black patients also often find their concerns ignored by healthcare professionals, with potentially deadly consequences.
Dr Annabel Sowemimo, a doctor of sexual and reproductive health and author of the book Divided: Racism, Medicine and Why We Need to Decolonise Healthcare, has spent many years facing and exploring this prejudice, and has seen her own concerns ignored as both a patient and a practitioner. Speaking to Index, she told a story from her time as a junior doctor working in the paediatric accident and emergency department, when a Somali child came in experiencing abdominal pain but with “atypical symptoms”. An experienced nurse said the child needed to go home with antibiotics, as they had a urinary tract infection. But Sowemimo was not convinced by this diagnosis.
“I saw the patient and I said, ‘I don’t really think that this child has an UTI’,” she said. “The dad didn’t really speak great English so it was difficult to communicate.” Ultimately, the child was diagnosed with severe appendicitis and needed surgery. “If they had not had surgery [the appendix] probably would have ruptured – that’s what the surgeon said to me,” Sowemimo added. “It was really hard, because I was a really junior doctor, I had been in the department for only a few weeks, and the nurse was quite senior and I didn’t want to be seen to be going against what she said.”
Sowemimo, who is from a Nigerian background, believes that a combination of cultural bias from staff and culturally influenced self-censorship by patients can play a collective role in misdiagnoses. “I don’t think that nurse was being racist, but there were certain things that made this child more vulnerable,” she said. “Culturally, I think the child had probably been raised in an environment like mine.
“I would, as a kid, never make a scene in public because my Nigerian parents just wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing. So sometimes, if I was uncomfortable, even around adults, I’d just hold that energy in, whereas other children could probably express that more.”
Sowemimo believes that self-silencing can be particularly pervasive among Black patients, who may have fears around their expressions of pain or discomfort being construed as “aggression” by healthcare professionals. “We change our behaviour,” she said. “We’re worried about being seen as ‘angry, Black women’ in particular. So even if I am in pain, I’m not going to feel comfortable yelling and writhing around. It doesn’t mean that I’m [less] in pain [than] the next person, just that I’m acutely aware that sometimes things get misread.”
A misguided belief that Black women “exaggerate” their symptoms has also proven to be fatal, and nowhere more so than in maternity care. Black women in the UK are nearly four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts. In 2023, an investigation into the death of a pregnant Black woman in Liverpool found “cultural and ethnic bias” played a part in her late diagnosis and death. Hospital staff had neglected to take some observations because she was “being difficult”, according to comments in her medical notes. This delayed her diagnosis and treatment and led to her baby dying, and then to her own death two days later.
Such biases are endemic in many countries, and ethnic minorities faced higher mortality rates during the pandemic. Black American doctor Susan Moore documented on social media how her pain and requests for medicine were ignored when she was in hospital with Covid-19 in 2020. She said she was made to feel like a “drug addict” for requesting remdesivir, the antiviral drug used to treat Covid patients. She later died due to complications from the virus. In May 2020, the British Medical Association (BMA) reported that more than 90% of all doctors and consultants who had lost their lives from Covid- 19 up until that point had been from minority ethnic backgrounds.
Sowemimo believes that “biology” is weaponised in healthcare settings, with doctors and nurses often concluding that Black people are more likely to die from certain illnesses due to genetics. There are many complex factors that play into higher death rates, she said, including later diagnoses and a lack of clinical research.
“With some reproductive cancers or endometrial cancer, it seems that Black people present later, and with prostate cancer we have worse outcomes,” she said. “We’re trying to direct research towards these issues to actually work out what is going on, but ultimately [research isn’t funded] towards groups that are not seen as politically mobile, who are more disenfranchised and impoverished.
“Often, people keep telling you that it’s biological, that we’re all biologically flawed in some way, and this is making us more predisposed to all these things. I think that’s actually even more sinister – how people keep on pathologising Blackness rather than addressing the systemic problems that exist.”
Beyond the treatment of individuals, systemic issues around resource allocation “compound” the discrimination facing minority groups, she says. In what think-tank The King’s Fund refers to as the “inverse care law”, those who most need medical care are least likely to receive it. For example, people who live in the most deprived areas of England are twice as likely to wait more than a year for non-urgent treatment, and there are fewer GPs per patient in more deprived areas. BME people are over-represented in the most deprived areas, and are two to three times more likely to be living in persistent poverty.
Disparities in care are caused by complex societal problems that reach far beyond the realms of healthcare services alone. So changing the behaviour of NHS staff is only the first hurdle, and a high one at that. “I make this argument a lot in my work, that it’s really hard to change something that has been embedded for such a long time,” said Sowemimo. “And I think a key part of why we have a lot of these issues [is that] people are just not willing to change their practice.”
Broaching inappropriate behaviour can be difficult, given that most NHS staff have good intentions and want to help people. “People… feel like they’re underpaid, and they do work particularly altruistically,” Sowemimo said. “So telling them that they’re not being altruistic, that they might be being biased or discriminatory, people are going to [think that’s] quite rude.”
In recent years, there has been increasing political scepticism from the government surrounding the need to address inequalities in the NHS. In 2023, for example, the then health secretary Steve Barclay ordered the NHS to stop recruiting for roles by focusing on diversity and inclusion. Health equity commitments have also been discarded – the Maternity Disparities Taskforce set up under former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2022 met only twice in 2023 rather than the scheduled six times, and reported little progress.
But there is hope on the horizon: the current Labour government has committed to a Race Equality Act, which includes several provisions around improving healthcare outcomes for BME people, including closing maternal health gaps and improving diversity in clinical trial recruitment. However, the current geopolitical climate could reverse efforts. US president Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes across the federal government may have a ripple effect for UK organisations, from which the public sector may not be exempt.
“There’s a lot of momentum around the push-back; we’re very much influenced by US politics,” Sowemimo said. Despite the hurdles, she isn’t going to stop banging the drum about healthcare inequalities. “I’ve always said that, sometimes, the work we’re doing is just to stand still,” she said. “It’s really hard when you’re in a time where you’re not actually fighting for progress, and no one’s going to say, ‘You’re the person that got that bill [or] that got these people their rights’. In fact, you just fought to make sure their rights weren’t removed.”
The week in free expression: 19–25 April 2025
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we cover El Salvador’s plan for a prisoner swap and look at how Hungary has been placed on an EU watchlist.
Political prisoners: Bukele condemned by families of American deportees for Venezuela swap plan
Last week, the Donald Trump administration once again made headlines for wrongfully deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García to a jail in El Salvador, and failing to facilitate his return. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has become a prominent figure in this story, aligning himself with Trump and stating that he “does not have the power” to return Garcia to the USA – a claim that experts say is false.
Now, Bukele has proposed a deal to send 252 Venezuelans incarcerated in El Salvador (following deportation from the US) back to their home country, in exchange for Salvadoran “political prisoners” currently held in Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro has stated that the Venezuelan nationals held in Salvadoran prisons were “kidnapped”, while Bukele has accused Maduro of imprisoning political opponents and activists.
These Venezuelans, many of whom are believed to have no criminal background and were deported on evidence as spurious as having tattoos, have now become pawns in a game of politics – which both their families and human rights groups alike have denounced. Nelson Suárez, whose brother is among those Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador, told The Guardian that he feels his brother is being treated “like political merchandise”.
Under surveillance: Hungary clashes with EU over use of facial recognition tech for LGBTQ+ Pride attendees
Last month, Hungary passed a law that banned LGBTQ+ pride marches in the country, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stating that he “won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.” This move sparked outrage, with opposition leaders lighting flares in parliament and demonstrators taking to the streets of Budapest. Now, one aspect of the law has drawn further ire.
The new legislation allows the use of biometric cameras by police for facial recognition and tracking of LGBTQ+ demonstrators and those attending Pride gatherings, which Politico reports could be in breach of the EU’s newly adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.
The European Commission is currently investigating whether this is the case, which has increased existing tensions between the EU and Hungary’s leadership.
This is just the latest threat to democratic rights in Hungary – last week, parliament rushed through a bill to allow passports of dual citizens to be revoked if they are perceived to have acted “in the interest of foreign powers” and to have “undermined the sovereignty of Hungary”. The bill’s passing through parliament has drawn fears about how it could be abused to strip dissenters of their citizenship.
AI deep fakes: False videos of James Bulger circulate on social media
While AI is being used against the public in Hungary, closer to home in the UK, public-generated AI videos have taken a concerning new turn – social media content creators are using AI to create “avatars” of murder victims describing their own deaths.
One harrowing example includes depictions of James Bulger, the two-year-old boy who was abducted and murdered in 1993. Fake videos are being generated that portray Bulger himself describing the details of the crime – content which Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, has described as “absolutely disgusting”.
Fergus is pushing for a new law to be passed that would prohibit the creation and sharing of this sort of AI content. Such videos are becoming increasingly prevalent online, with some accounts creating likenesses for multiple murder cases.
Index’s CEO Jemimah Steinfeld spoke to the BBC this week, stating that these videos already break existing laws, and that there is a concern that further regulation could restrict legitimate, legal content.
Steinfeld said that while we should “avoid a knee-jerk reaction that puts everything in this terrible box”, she sympathises with Fergus. “To have to relive what she’s been through, again and again, as tech improves, I can’t imagine what that feels like.”
Imprisoned for a hashtag: Algeria clamps down against peaceful online activism
Amnesty International has condemned the Algerian government for its continued moves to repress online activism within the country.
The organisation reports that at least 23 activists and journalists have been arrested and convicted for human rights activism and protests over the past five months, with a focus on the use of the hashtag “Manich Radi” (“I am not satisfied”), which first came to prominence in December 2024.
The hashtag started being used after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, with many Algerians reportedly drawing similarities between the situations in Syria and Algeria and becoming hopeful of a fight for democracy in their nation.
But Algerian authorities responded to this with swift arrests, and have continued their campaign against those posting the hashtag. Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said of the online movement: “Let no one think that Algeria can be devoured by a hashtag”.
Academic asylum: American professors seek refuge in Canada
Hundreds of Canadian professors have urged the Canadian government to open its doors to “academic refugees” from the USA amid President Trump’s attack on universities and education.
CTV News reported this week that more than 500 Canadian university faculty members had signed an open letter calling for greater funding to Canada’s higher education system and programmes to allow more foreign professors and academics to resettle in the country, to fight the “rising anti-intellectualism” in the USA.
This follows a continuing stream of reports of American academics looking to seek exile in Canada as their professions come under fire by the Trump administration. Many US universities have seen increasing restrictions, most notably Harvard University, which is currently locked in a major funding dispute with the US federal government. The university’s president Alan Garber told NBC that he is “very concerned about Harvard’s future”.
University professors across the country are equally as concerned about the future of education in the USA. One such professor is Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University. Stanley, who has written multiple books about fascism, recently accepted a position at the University of Toronto. He told the Daily Nous that he was leaving the USA to “raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.