In the evening of the 26th of July, elements of Niger’s armed forces seized power from President Mohamed Bazoum in a short and bloodless coup d’état.
Led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, the coupists, calling themselves the “National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland”, also deposed the Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou and his government, suspending Niger’s constitution and appointing 21 new ministers, including a new Prime Minister, Ali Lamina Zeine.
The Sahel region in West Africa is undergoing an unprecedented period of political unrest since the start of the pandemic. There have now been 6 successful coups in the region since 2020; in Mali, Sudan, and Guinea in 2021, 2 in Burkina Faso in 2022, and now in Niger, a nation which has suffered 4 successful coups of its own since independence from France in 1960, most recently in 2010. Bazoum was the first Nigerien President to rise to power following a peaceful transfer of power after elections.
These instances have led to the region being branded the “coup belt”, with nations from the Atlantic to the Red Sea overthrowing their western-backed democratically elected governments in favour of military juntas, often espousing anti-imperialist and pro-Russian sentiment. Niger, which sits in the centre of this belt, I fear will not be the last nation in Africa to make such a decision against the will of its people.
Niger had also been subject to an attempted coup in 2021, after Bazoum won the election that year. Dissenting elements of Niger’s armed forces tried to storm the Presidential Palace in the capital Niamey, but were repelled by the Presidential Guard. Tchiani, ironically, led the Guard against the attempted coupists, and Bazoum was sworn in two days later.
According to members of Bazoum’s cabinet, Bazoum made clear his intention to relieve Tchiani of his leadership of the Presidential Guard during a cabinet meeting two days before the coup. It was known that relations between Bazoum and Tchiani were strained, and this news may have been the final straw for Tchiani.
This most recent Nigerien coup, and the others in the region, are set against the backdrop of a bloody insurgency in the Sahel. Islamist militant groups linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL, including the infamous Boko Haram, have been attacking civilian and military targets in the region since the 2011 Arab Spring. France held a large military presence in the region supporting its former colonies in the Sahel against these groups.
However, anti-French sentiment has been growing in the Sahel as the conflict rages on and more civilian lives are lost. Western-backed governments which had been hosting the French were increasingly seen as ineffective in the face of the jihadists, leading to the string of coups we have seen since 2020.
The military governments set up in Mali and Burkina Faso were quick to expel French forces from their territory, strengthening ties with Russia and the Wagner Group as replacement security guarantors. Indeed, the coup in Niger seems to be following this trend, with pro-coup demonstrators flying Russian flags and expressing pro-Wagner sentiment the day after Bazoum was ousted.
Wagner have been making steady gains in Mali and Burkina Faso in the absence of French forces, but time will tell if they will make better progress than the French against the jihadists.
Another consequence of the coup is the imminent threat of combined military intervention by ECOWAS, the economic and political union of West African countries, against the coupists in Niamey. This has the potential to spark an even larger conflict in the region, as pro-Russian coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso have pledged military support to Niger should ECOWAS intervene.
As things stand, ECOWAS have delivered an ultimatum to the coupists; return Bazoum to power and reinstate the constitution by the 6th of August, or face military action. It is not clear if ECOWAS will make good on its threat, but such action would not be without precedent; ECOWAS has previously intervened in the Gambia following a constitutional crisis in 2016, successfully restoring the democratically elected President and the stabilising the country.
Africa can ill-afford this kind of instability right now. With the war in Sudan between the army and the RSF still raging, conflict-induced famine in Somalia, ethnic insurgencies in the eastern DRC, and now growing Wagner encroachment in West Africa, the entire region south of the Sahara and north of Southern Africa is at risk of perma-crisis.
A diplomatic solution to this coup is not forthcoming. I doubt ECOWAS will commit to its deadline and invade Niger by the 6th of August, and I doubt we have seen the last coup in this part of Africa. As tensions between the West and Russia intensify over Ukraine, sub-Saharan Africa is ripe to become the staging ground of new proxy wars between these old enemies.
stay safe
/e