Will We See the Gabon Model in the Central Sahel?
Not this year, I think. Meanwhile, Guinea may be next to "transition."
Between 2019 and 2023, there was a “wave of coups” in Africa - or rather, since I find the “wave” (or “coup belt”) idea too oversimplified, we could say that there was a cluster of coups that shared some resemblances amid some important differences. The coups included those in Sudan (2019, 2022), Mali (2020, 2021), Chad (2021), Guinea (2021), Burkina Faso (2022, twice), Niger (2023), and Gabon (2023).
Only two of those countries - Chad and Gabon - have now formally concluded their post-coup “transitions.” Others are trudging through, to borrow the title of a volume on Nigeria in the 1980s and early 1990s, “transition[s] without end.” And then Sudan has its own complex and tragic situation.
In Chad and Gabon, each country’s transition concluded in the same way, namely with the election of the coup leader as president. Chad’s transition wrapped up with the election of May 2024, in which Mahamat Deby won a first-round victory with 61% of the vote. Now Gabon has held its own election, on April 12, with official results giving General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema a victory of more than 90%. Gabon has completed one of the most rapid transitions out of the “coup wave” countries, at just twenty months, even as Mali approaches the five-year mark of the 2020 coup there.
If I were a coup leader wanting to hold on to power for as long as possible, the model we’ve seen in Chad and Gabon would be the most appealing to me. Organizing elections, running in them, and winning them offers the advantage of legitimating one’s rule internationally while settling domestic ambiguities about the future of one’s tenure. So why have military leaders, particularly in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, not (yet) headed in that direction?
I can only guess, of course, but the starting point of an answer may be in one similarity between Chad and Gabon - these were both ultra-insider coups. Chad’s coup was a coup in a constitutional sense but not in a practical sense. The country’s longtime ruler died on the battlefield and his son, backed by top generals and officials, took power. The Chadian coup marked a continuation of family/clique rule in Chad, and the younger Deby has used many of the same strategies and personnel that his father did. In Gabon, the coup was more disruptive in the sense that longtime President Ali Bongo was overthrown, but the coup was nevertheless an insider affair and even a “palace coup” in the sense that coup leader Brice Oligui is Bongo’s cousin, and also received the backing of top generals. Two data points do not necessarily make a pattern, but it is striking that the two coup leaders who have felt confident enough to offer themselves as presidential candidates are also the two coup leaders who were nearest to the apex of power before their takeovers.
In the central Sahel, the coups were much more disruptive to existing power structures and systems. In Mali (2020), Burkina Faso (2022-January), and Niger (2023), officers overthrew elected civilian presidents who had been operating within broad constitutional and two-term norms; in Mali and Burkina Faso, meanwhile, the coups were authored by colonels, not generals, adding to the degree of disruption. Ideologically, too, the central Sahelian coups were much more of a break than those in Chad and Gabon; the coup leaders brought a populist, “sovereigntist,” anti-French, and eventually pro-Russian posture.
There has been endless speculation about the central Sahelian coup leaders, especially Mali’s Assimi Goïta, eventually running for president - and I still think that’s the most likely outcome over the long term. But for the moment, Goïta, Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, and Niger’s Abdourahamane Tchiani all appear content with the open-ended transition model; indeed, Tiani recently scored himself a five-year mandate as transitional president.
I can think of four advantages that the open-ended transition has over the coup-leader-to-elected-president model:
Preserving ambiguity about timelines and intentions has costs but also benefits, specifically in terms of keeping the civilian political class and other potential rivals off-balance;
An open-ended transition can play into claims that one is bringing systemic and revolutionary change, that the country is going through an exceptional time that necessitates exceptional measures, etc.;
An election could bring risks of surprisingly strong challengers, popular mobilization, and international scrutiny;
An election brings in new questions about the future, especially concerning term limits.
For the coup-maker these days, moreover, you can often keep the election card in your pocket until you want to play it. That doesn’t always work - within living memory, military regimes ended violently in Niger (1999) and ambiguously in Nigeria (1998) - but on the whole, the power to set the terms of the transition rests with military authorities. Whether because they don’t quite feel confident enough to go to the polls, or because they find advantage in prolonging the transition, the central Sahelian juntas aren’t rushing to hold a vote.
If there is momentum towards the Chad/Gabon scenario, it is in Guinea. A constitutional referendum is typically a key step on the road to presidential elections out of military rule, and Guinea has scheduled its referendum for this September. A referendum doesn’t always mean presidential elections are near - Mali held a referendum in 2023 - but in Guinea’s case we may see a President Mamady Doumbouya in 2026. And eventually I think we will see that scenario play out in the central Sahel as well, just not quite as soon.