Category: Africa

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Ernest Harsch, Researcher, Institute of African Studies, Columbia University

Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and Gabon have all suffered regime change in the last five years, led by men in military uniform.

Madagascar and Guinea-Bissau experienced the same fate in 2025. Benin looked to join the list in early December, but the civilian government held onto power – just.

The academic literature on coups in Africa has highlighted a wide range of influences and triggers. These include:

• personal and institutional rifts within the armed forces

• susceptibility to both elite manipulation and popular pressure

• instigation by foreign powers against governments deemed hostile to their interests.

In a recent paper I added a further question: to what extent were democratic failings an element in the coups of the past six years?

I am a journalist and academic who has focused on African political and development issues since the 1970s. Among my most recently published books is Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution.

In the paper I explored underlying shortcomings of Africa’s democracies as one major factor leading to military seizures. I focused on the recent coups in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon.

I selected those cases because each of their takeovers was mounted against an elected civilian government. In some instances, I found, factors other than poor elections were also at play. The juntas in both Burkina Faso and Niger cited political defects of their elected, if somewhat ineffective, governments. But they mainly blamed their predecessors’ failure to put down growing jihadist insurgencies.

Insecurity was also a factor in Mali. But Mali, Guinea and Gabon all had elections commonly perceived to have been rigged or in violation of constitutional term limits. They provoked popular opposition which prompted officers to step in.

My main finding was thus that popular disappointment in elected governments was a prominent element. It established a more favourable context enabling officers to seize power with a measure of popular support.

That finding suggests that in order to better protect democracy in Africa, it is not sufficient to simply condemn military coups (as Africa’s regional institutions, such as the African Union and Economic Community of West African States, are quick to do). African activists, and some policymakers, have urged a step further: denouncing elected leaders who violate democratic rights or rig their systems to hang onto power.

If elected leaders were better held to account, then potential coup makers would lose one of their central justifications.

Problems are bigger than rigged polls

The problems, however, go beyond rigged polls, errant elected leaders, and violated constitutions. Many African governments, whether they are democratic or not, have great difficulty meeting citizens’ expectations, especially for improvements in their daily lives.

The deeper structural weaknesses of African states further contribute to hampering effective governance. As Ugandan anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, Kenyan political scholar Ken Ochieng’ Opalo, and other African scholars have pointed out, those shortcomings include the externally oriented and fragmentary nature of the states inherited from colonial rule. These exclude many citizens from active political engagement and ensure government by unaccountable elites.

In particular, a neoliberal model of democracy has been widely adopted in Africa since the 1990s. That model insists that democracy be tethered to pro-market economic policies and greatly limit the size and activities of African states. That in turn hinders the ability of even well-elected governments to provide their citizens with security and services.

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Read more: South African protesters echo a global cry: democracy isn’t making people’s lives better

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Conducting elections while continuing to subject African economies to the economic policy direction of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank has left them with a “choiceless democracy,” as Malawian economist Thandika Mkandawire termed it. That is, while voters may sometimes be able to change top leaders, they cannot alter basic economic policies. Such policies generally favour austerity and cutbacks over delivering jobs, education and healthcare.

So in addition to improving the quality of democratic systems on the continent, “coup proofing” African states will also require giving greater scope to popular input into real decision making, in both the political and economic spheres.

That will depend primarily on Africans themselves fighting for the democracies they want. Clearing the way for them means ending the all-too-common repression of street mobilisations and alternative views that displease the ruling elites.

Support for democracy

There may be general unhappiness with the flaws of Africa’s electoral systems. Surveys nevertheless demonstrate continued strong support for the ideals of democracy. Many ordinary Africans, moreover, are mobilising in various ways to advance their own conceptions of democratic practice.

For example, when the Macky Sall government in Senegal used repression and unconstitutional manoeuvres to try to prolong his tenure, tens of thousands mobilised in the streets in 2023-24 to block him and force an election that brought radical young oppositionists to power.

In Sudan, the community resistance committees that mobilised massively against the country’s military elites outlined an alternative vision of a people’s democracy encompassing national elections, decentralised local assemblies, and participatory citizen engagement.

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Read more: Africans want consensual democracy – why is that reality so hard to accept?

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Findings by the Afrobarometer research network, which has repeatedly polled tens of thousands of African citizens, provide solid grounds for hope. Surveys in 39 countries between 2021 and 2023 show that 66% of respondents still strongly preferred democracy to any alternative form of government.

For anyone committed to a democratic future for Africa, that is something to build on.

– Coups in Africa: how democratic failings help shape military takeovers – study
– https://theconversation.com/coups-in-africa-how-democratic-failings-help-shape-military-takeovers-study-271565

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Martin Mourre, Historien et anthropologue spécialisé dans les armées coloniales et postcoloniales en Afrique de l’Ouest, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

The Thiaroye camp near Dakar was a Senegalese army barracks housing African soldiers called “tirailleurs sénégalais” (Senegalese riflemen). It welcomed men returning from the European front of the second world war, where the riflemen had been held as German prisoners of war while serving on the side of France. They were waiting for their long-overdue back pay and bonuses.

But at dawn on 1 December 1944, they were shot by their own French officers. What should have been a time of celebration became a bloodbath. France sought to downplay or deny the massacre for many years.

In 2024, ahead of the 80th anniversary commemorations of the massacre, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko appointed a commission to establish the truth of what happened, to ensure proper recognition and reparations for the victims, and to assert Senegal’s sovereignty to write its own history.

Chaired by Professor Mamadou Diouf of Columbia University, one of its tasks was to draft a new report (a white paper) on Thiaroye. This was presented to President Bassirou Diomaye Faye on 17 October 2025.

Martin Mourre, a historian and anthropologist specialising in colonial armies, has studied this issue and explains what the new report brings to light and why Thiaroye remains so sensitive.

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What happened at Thiaroye?

On 21 November 1944, the first group of former prisoners of war arrived at the Thiaroye camp to be demobilised. They were owed substantial sums, mainly the back pay accumulated during their captivity.

The French army refused to give them what they were owed, even though the funds were reportedly available in Dakar.

On 27 November, tensions escalated, prompting the intervention of a senior officer. He planned a repression operation that, on 1 December, turned into a massacre.

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Read more: The time has come for France to own up to the massacre of its own troops in Senegal

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Even though a number of questions remain unanswered, the event is fairly well documented. The main debate revived by the new report and echoed in the media focuses on two issues: the death toll and the burial site of the victims.

Regarding the death toll, one may rely on a literal reading of the archives, which consistently report 35 deaths (or 70 in one officer’s report, phrased in a particularly obscure way).

On this point, the white paper does not appear to go further than previous research, which supports a higher estimate of 300 to 400 deaths.

How has France responded to the Thiaroye issue over the years?

France actively sought to erase the events at Thiaroye. In the weeks following the tragedy, French officials declared, according to archival records, that adequate measures must be taken to hide these hours of madness. The language reveals a deliberate effort to downplay and conceal the atrocity.

This continued long after independence in 1960. One of the most infamous examples is the censorship of the acclaimed film The Camp at Thiaroye by Senegalese filmmakers Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow, which failed to find distributors in France when it was released.

However, things began to change in the 2000s, particularly when President Abdoulaye Wade organised official commemorations of the massacre. For the first time, a special French ambassador attending the commemoration acknowledged the colonial army’s responsibility for the tragedy.

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Read more: Ousmane Sembène at 100: a tribute to Senegal’s ‘father of African cinema’

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A more prominent gesture came in 2014 when President François Hollande visited the military cemetery. He delivered a speech and handed over a batch of archives to Senegalese President Macky Sall. He claimed – falsely, as it later turned out – that these represented all the documents France possessed on the massacre.

These archives were not available for analysis in Senegal until an executive order was issued by President Bassirou Diomaye Faye in 2024. The reason for the decade-long blockade was never adequately explained.

In 2024, President Emmanuel Macron went further than his predecessor by officially recognising events at Thiaroye as “a massacre”. A word his predecessor had avoided. Macron made this statement in a letter to Faye.

What new information does the report provide?

The main new element presented in the white paper is the initial outcome of archaeological excavations of the burial site, carried out by a team from Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop University. They have so far uncovered the remains of seven individuals.

All indications are that these men were victims of the massacre. Investigators highlighted the rushed and irregular nature of the graves and the burials, with bodies still dressed in military uniforms.

French administrative records had offered no answers about where or how the victims were laid to rest. This left the question of potential mass graves unresolved and shrouded in uncertainty.

These new findings from the report verify that victims were buried at this site. They also challenge official French narratives. The investigation continues. The archaeological team plans to expand their search, believing that more remains may lie hidden across the site.

What momentum led to the search at the grave site?

The issue of excavations of this site has a longer history. In 2017, several pan-African organisations urged Senegalese authorities to carry out such searches at Thiaroye. Among them was the party of Ousmane Sonko, today prime minister of Senegal but then a member of parliament.

Ten years earlier, during the construction of a highway crossing part of the military camp, historian Cheikh Faty Faye had already raised the issue publicly. Faye, who died in 2021, had worked on Thiaroye since the 1970s. He was part of a tradition of activist-scholars connected to pan-Africanist movements.

Through decades of commemoration and organising, these groups transformed the cemetery into a site of collective memory.

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Read more: David Diop: his haunting account of a Senegalese soldier that won the Booker prize

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The cemetery holds 202 graves, roughly 30 of which stand apart from the others. To my knowledge, no scientific work has traced its origins, but it likely dates back to the first world war, when the Thiaroye camp was built.

It’s located about 1km from the camp’s main entrance. It served as the burial ground for west African riflemen from Senegal and numerous other French colonial territories who died during training. Their remains were never repatriated.

If future research confirms that the recently discovered bodies belong to the men killed on 1 December, it would be an important step towards clarifying the death toll.

What else is important in this report?

While the white paper dedicates considerable attention to the death toll, it also signals an interest in recovering the individual life stories of the Thiaroye riflemen.

Yet in my view, a crucial question remains unaddressed: the distinctly colonial character of the violence itself.

This is a form of violence inherent to the colonial context, marked by racialisation, a sense of impunity, and the distance between the colony and mainland France.

The challenge today is no longer just to document what happened at Thiaroye. It is ensure that this history is passed on to future generations. Integrating it into school curricula – anchored in rigorous scholarly work – shows how understanding the past illuminates the present and helps build a collective memory on solid foundations.

– Thiaroye massacre: report on the French killing of Senegalese troops in 1944 exposes a painful history
– https://theconversation.com/thiaroye-massacre-report-on-the-french-killing-of-senegalese-troops-in-1944-exposes-a-painful-history-271035

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Kerstin Bree Carlson, Associate Professor International Law, Roskilde University

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been called “the worst place on earth to be a woman” and “the rape capital of the world”. A 2014 survey estimated that 22% of women and 10% of men had experienced sexual violence during the conflict in the country’s east. After years of impunity, Roger Lumbala, a 67-year-old former member of parliament who once led a rebel group in eastern DRC, is facing trial for these crimes. He is charged in a French court with complicity in crimes against humanity, including summary executions, torture, rape, pillage and enslavement. Kerstin Bree Carlson, a scholar of international criminal law and transitional justice, explains the significance of this trial and the controversies it has sparked.

What is the special war crimes chamber in Paris? And what is ‘universal jurisdiction’?

Lumbala is being tried before a special war crimes tribunal in Paris because France exercises “universal jurisdiction” over international atrocity crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. These are the crimes that are the remit of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Because the ICC is designed to be a court of last resort, hearing international atrocity crimes only when states cannot or will not, all ICC member states must criminalise international atrocity crimes in their domestic criminal codes.

Although courts usually only try cases against their own citizens or which occur on their own territory, France’s “universal jurisdiction” law allows it to hear cases regarding atrocity crimes committed outside France by non-French nationals. The law restricts the application of universal jurisdiction to individuals residing in France who are citizens of countries that are ICC members. Prosecutors in France’s special war crimes unit (“OCLCH”) furthermore enjoy discretion over which cases they pursue.

Prosecutions unfold as they do for any criminal case in France: a claim made by the prosecutor is sent to an investigative judge. The judge examines the claim neutrally, weighing evidence of guilt and innocence, to determine whether to issue an indictment. These findings can be appealed. When the appeals are finalised, if the indictment stands, the indicted individuals are put on trial before a panel of judges and a jury who will determine guilt (and an eventual sentence).

In addition to prosecution and defence, victims can participate in the proceedings as “civil parties”. Civil parties are full participants; they may call witnesses, address the court through argumentation, and question witnesses brought by prosecution and defence.

Lumbala’s path to the Paris court

Lumbala’s trial opened on 12 November 2025. The indictment alleges that Lumbala conspired to and was complicit in the commission of crimes against humanity in relation to Operation “Effacer le tableau” (Wipe the Slate Clean). This was a military campaign that terrorised eastern Congo in 2002-3.

The civil parties in Lumbala’s case played a central role in bringing Lumbala before the court. These include international NGOs such as TRIAL International, the Clooney Foundation for Justice, the Minority Rights Group, Amnesty International, We are not Weapons of War and others. These groups have recorded atrocity crimes in the DRC for decades, and some assisted in the 2010 Mapping report by the UN, a seminal document which detailed the extent of the violence between 1993 and 2003.

Lumbala has resided in France on and off since 2013. It was his application for asylum that put him on French authorities’ radar, and they opened an investigation into his alleged crimes in connection with his role as leader of a rebel group turned political party, Rally of Congolese Democrats and Nationalists (RCD-N). In late 2020, French authorities arrested him. Investigative judges issued an indictment against him in November 2023; that indictment was upheld by the appeals court in March 2024, leading to the opening of the trial. If convicted, Lumbala could face life imprisonment.

What is at stake in this trial?

Although a few low-level soldiers in the DRC have been tried, no high-ranking leader has been convicted for the pervasive practice of using rape as a weapon of war. A decade ago, one of Lumbala’s allies, Jean-Pierre Bemba, was prosecuted by the ICC for war crimes, including sexual violence committed in Central African Republic. Bemba’s 2016 conviction was widely celebrated as a victory for victims. His 2018 acquittal on appeal for procedural reasons was a bitter pill.

Victims wanting to address Lumbala directly have been served their own bitter pill. At the end of the first day of the trial, Lumbala announced that he did not recognise the court’s jurisdiction and would not participate in the trial. He told the court:

This is reminiscent of past centuries. The jury is French; the prosecutor is French. This court does not even know where DRC is.

Lumbala left the court and has not attended the trial since then. Every morning he is brought from jail, and sits in the basement of the court house instead of in the courtroom. He also fired his lawyers, who in turn refused to assist the court in providing a defence in absentia.

Technically, there is no problem; the trial may continue.

Symbolically, Lumbala’s absence deprives civil parties of the chance to address the defendant personally. For a victim, being able to face the alleged perpetrator as a rebalance of power is one of the purposes of trial, and contributes to justice; Lumbala’s absence may make the trial less fair for victims.

Without the participation of the defence, will the trial seem fair to others? For Lumbala and his team, who have been fighting France’s jurisdiction over this case for years, the move is in keeping with their general defence strategy of sowing doubt.

What this means for the court, and for the prosecution of universal jurisdiction cases more generally, is the larger question. If defendants can endanger judicial legitimacy by refusing to participate, it will not be the last time we see this strategy. Universal jurisdiction has been challenged in other countries: Belgium’s wide-reaching 1993 universal jurisdiction law was repealed in 2003 after a decade of practice. France’s more limited practice, akin to extraterritorial jurisdiction, is a test case for how individual countries can help support the work of the ICC. Although the ICC can investigate any case in or involving its member states, the unfulfilled arrest warrants against Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu are a reminder of how difficult it can be for the ICC to take custody over defendants.

The greater significance of the Lumbala case is therefore what it may mean for France, or any country or institution, to prosecute atrocity crimes outside its borders, which will in turn have an impact on impunity for international atrocity crimes.

– Roger Lumbala is accused of horrific war crimes in DRC: can his trial in France bring justice?
– https://theconversation.com/roger-lumbala-is-accused-of-horrific-war-crimes-in-drc-can-his-trial-in-france-bring-justice-270482