On April 12, 2025, the world watched as Gabonese citizens cast their ballots in the first presidential election since the fall of the Bongo dynasty, which had ruled the country for nearly six decades.
But rather than marking a clean democratic break from the past, the election signaled the consolidation of power by Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema—the military officer who deposed President Ali Bongo Ondimba in the 2023 coup and has since served as transitional president. Despite earlier promises of a swift return to civilian rule, Oligui Nguema’s reported 94.9 percent landslide victory points to a deepening pattern of post-coup entrenchment seen across the region.
Military leaders have increasingly abandoned an earlier tendency of swiftly transferring power back to civilian authorities in the aftermath of coups. In some cases, transitional periods have been generously extended and elections have been postponed indefinitely, as in Burkina Faso and Mali. In others, such as Chad and now Gabon, coup leaders have used elections to legitimize their continued grip on power.
But the implications of these maneuvers extend far beyond the domestic politics of any single country. As coup leaders across the region observe each other, successful efforts to entrench power—whether through delayed transitions, manipulated elections, or the repression of key opposition forces—serve as a blueprint for others to emulate.
Coup contagion refers to the idea that military takeovers don’t just happen in isolation—they can spread across borders. When one country falls to a coup, it may increase the chances that others nearby will follow. It isn’t just the seizure of power that spreads, though, but also the playbook for staying in power, refined and reinforced across borders.
West and Central Africa have experienced a surge of coups since 2020. From Mali and Chad to Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, and Gabon, military takeovers have swept across the region in rapid succession. Some analysts point to shared vulnerabilities—such as weak institutions, poor governance, and widespread discontent—as the root causes of this wave. But the timing and proximity of these events suggest something more: that coups can influence each other.
The logic is straightforward. When military officers in one country watch a coup unfold elsewhere, they’re not just observing—they’re learning. They pay close attention to what succeeds, what fails, and how both citizens and the international community respond. These events send powerful signals. If a coup fails or is met with harsh consequences—such as swift international sanctions or domestic backlash—then it may serve as a warning. But if a coup succeeds with minimal resistance or even public support, then it can embolden officers in neighboring states to follow suit.
Capturing power in dramatic fashion usually grabs the headlines, but for coup leaders, it’s only the beginning. The immediate aftermath of a coup—the period of consolidation—is critical as leaders navigate domestic unrest, political rivals, and international pressures.
Researchers have shown that authoritarian regimes often learn from one another—borrowing tools of repression, propaganda, and political control to entrench power. But much of that focus has been on entrenched dictatorships. What’s often overlooked is how coup leaders, particularly those emerging within the same regional wave, adopt similar tactics in the critical period shortly after seizing power, such as in Africa’s recent string of coups. While standard measures such as restricting the press and sidelining rivals remain common, alternative approaches increasingly reflect lessons drawn from neighboring juntas.
One such example has been the systematic delays of promised transitions back to civilian rule. Mali, the first domino to fall within the recent cascade of coups, set an important precedent. The country’s August 2020 coup ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and brought Col. Assimi Goïta to power, first as the vice president of the transitional government alongside President Bah Ndaw. Less than a year later, Goïta assumed full leadership for himself after he orchestrated another coup to remove Ndaw.
Since then, Goïta’s government has repeatedly postponed elections. Transitional authorities have offered up a range of justifications—including “technical reasons”; the creation of a new constitution; and disputes with Idemia, the French biometric firm that manages the electoral registry—to support the rescheduling. The indefinite delay of the most recent presidential election, originally scheduled for February 2024, represented yet another broken promise. More than that, it sent a clear signal: Goïta has little intention of relinquishing power on any fixed timeline.
That signal wasn’t lost on Goïta’s peers.
In Guinea, Col. Mamady Doumbouya’s junta adopted a similar script after he toppled President Alpha Condé in September 2021. Justifying his power grab as a patriotic duty “to save the country,” Doumbouya initially promised a two-year transition back to civilian administration and elections by the end of December 2024. The junta would later echo Mali’s rationale, citing the need to draft a new constitution as justification for extending the transition. This was accompanied by the dissolution of numerous political parties and the forced retirement of nearly 1,000 military personnel—clear signs of a broader effort to dismantle the old order and consolidate power.
After missing its promised deadline, the junta’s broken commitments sparked protests, resulting in yet another extension for elections to December 2025. Doumbouya’s pledge to hold a constitutional referendum has offered little reassurance, as the absence of a concrete timeline underscored his reluctance to cede control.
In Burkina Faso, Lt.-Col. Paul-Henri Damiba seized power in January 2022, ousting President Roch Kaboré and promising a return to democratic rule through a new Basic Law affirming civil liberties. But just eight months later, Capt. Ibrahim Traoré overthrew him, citing Damiba’s failure to contain the country’s Islamist insurgency. Traoré dissolved the government, suspended the constitution, and centralized authority under his junta.
Though Traoré initially pledged to restore civilian rule by July 2024, he reversed course in May of that year, extending military rule by five years and declaring himself eligible to run for president—just days after Chad’s junta leader, Mahamat Déby, secured a contested election victory. Déby, who assumed power after his father’s death in 2021, had likewise promised a transition before using the vote to cement his rule. Now Gabon follows suit, with Oligui Nguema using an election to legitimize his post-coup presidency.
These moves reveal a broader lesson among coup leaders: Even when transitions end in elections, the goal is not to exit power but rather to entrench it. And the trend is measurable. Since 2020, the median time in power for armed forces in Africa has exceeded 1,000 days—up dramatically from an average of just 22 days between 2002 and 2020.
The strategic realignment of foreign policy—and the accompanying anti-colonial rhetoric—has become a crucial tool for post-coup consolidation. Junta leaders have increasingly distanced themselves from traditional Western partners, especially France, turning instead to alternatives such as Russia, whose support comes with fewer demands for democratic governance. Yet beyond copying each other’s moves, these shifts now reflect a deeper evolution: a transition from simple imitation toward coordinated, active cooperation.
Once again, Mali set the tone. After Goïta seized power, regional blocs such as ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) and the African Union issued condemnations, and France suspended joint military operations. Rather than backtrack, Goïta pivoted—deepening ties with Russia and expelling French forces—all while employing the language of national sovereignty and a rejection of Western neocolonialism. At the center of this new partnership was the Russian Wagner Group, whose mercenaries arrived in 2021 to support Mali’s counterterrorism efforts.
Though never officially acknowledged, Wagner’s presence offered Goïta more than just battlefield support. The group provided a loyal, extralegal security partner that helped suppress internal dissent. Wagner faced credible accusations of human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings, particularly at former U.N. bases jointly operated with the Malian army. Despite these abuses, the partnership helped solidify Goïta’s control, a trend that will likely continue with the replacement of Wagner with its successor, Russia’s state-controlled Africa Corps.
Burkina Faso and Niger followed in the years that followed, severing ties with France, embracing Russia, and adopting similar anti-colonial narratives to justify their realignment. By late 2023, these three countries formalized their cooperation with the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States—a bloc explicitly designed to protect military sovereignty and resist foreign interference.
What began as isolated post-coup tactics in Mali have matured into a coordinated regional strategy. The contagion of military rule extended beyond imitation, evolving into institutionalized collaboration among juntas seeking to secure their hold on power.
Like in the first stage of contagion, the strategies used to consolidate power after a coup are shaped by how well other military regimes in the region have managed to entrench themselves. Each extension of a transitional period, each landslide victory in a tightly controlled election, and each successful pivot away from Western partners serves as a proof of concept.
So, what’s the takeaway for actors in the international community observing this second phase of the coup wave? Fundamentally, a two-pronged shift is needed in how the politics of military coups are understood and addressed.
First, international actors must abandon the habit of treating each coup as an isolated event. That approach not only misses the cross-border learning that is underway—it also allows the success of one junta to encourage the ambitions of others. Moreover, inconsistency in responses has become a feature, not a bug: While juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso have faced sanctions and vocal condemnation, others, such as those in Chad and Gabon, have encountered far less resistance. This is in part due to the fragmented nature of the international response, where geopolitical interests and security partnerships often outweigh a principled and unified stance on civilian rule.
Second, international engagement must focus on the realities of post-coup governance, not just the formal benchmarks that juntas promise. These promises—such as election dates or constitutional referendums—are often used strategically to create the appearance of progress while delaying genuine transitions. An overreliance on such timelines risks rewarding superficial gestures, which not only legitimize regimes domestically but also send powerful signals across the region.
These shifts in approach would not only improve responses to individual cases, but more importantly, they would also help disrupt the incentive structure driving the spread of consolidation strategies.
The first stage of Africa’s coup contagion captured global attention. But it is this quieter second stage—the slow entrenchment of military regimes—that will determine whether these regimes will become permanent fixtures. Stopping the spread now depends not only on deterring the next coup, but also on undermining the playbook that keeps coup leaders in power long after the headlines fade.