MIL Africa Engine

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Salah Ben Hammou, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Rice University

August 2025 makes it five years since Malian soldiers ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in a coup d’état. While the event reshaped Mali’s domestic politics, it also marked the beginning of a broader wave of military takeovers that swept parts of Africa between 2020 and 2023.

Soldiers have toppled governments in Niger, Burkina Faso (twice), Sudan, Chad, Guinea and Gabon.

The return of military coups shocked many observers. Once thought to be relics of the cold war, an “extinct” form of regime change, coups appeared to be making a comeback.

No new coups have taken place since Gabon’s in 2023, but the ripple effects are far from over. Gabon’s coup leader, Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema, formally assumed the presidency in May 2025. In doing so he broke promises that the military would step aside from politics. In Mali, the ruling junta dissolved all political parties to tighten its grip on power.

Across the affected countries, military rulers remain entrenched. Sudan, for its part, has descended into a devastating civil war following its coup in 2021.

Analysts often cite weak institutions, rising insecurity, and popular frustration with civilian governments to explain coups. While these factors play a role, they don’t capture the patterns we have observed.

I have studied and written on military coups for nearly a decade, especially this coup wave.

After a close analysis of the coup cascade, I conclude that the international community must move beyond the view of coups as isolated events.

Patterns suggest that the Sahelian coups are not isolated. Coup leaders are not only seizing power, they are learning from one another how to entrench authority, sidestep international pressure and craft narratives that legitimise their rule.

To help preserve democratic rule, the international community must confront five lessons revealed by the recent military takeovers.

Key lessons

Contagion: Just a month after Guinea’s military ousted President Alpha Condé, Sudan’s army disrupted its democratic transition. Three months later, Burkina Faso’s officers toppled President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré amid rising insecurity.

Each case had unique triggers, but the timing suggests more than coincidence.

Potential coup leaders watch closely, not just to see if a coup succeeds but what kinds of challenges arise as the event unfolds. When coups fail and plotters face harsh consequences, others are less likely to follow.

Whether coups spread depends on the perceived risks as much as on opportunity. But when coups succeed – especially if new leaders quickly take control and avoid immediate instability – they send a signal that can encourage others to act.

Civilian support matters: Civilian support for coups is real and observed.

Since the start of Africa’s recent coup wave, many commentators have highlighted the cheering crowds that often welcome soldiers, celebrating the fall of unpopular regimes. Civilian support is a common and often underestimated aspect of coup politics. It signals to potential coup plotters that military rule can win legitimacy and public backing.

This popular support also helps coup leaders strengthen their grip on power, shielding their regimes from both domestic opposition and international pressure. For example, following Niger’s 2023 coup, the putschists faced international condemnation and the threat of military intervention. In response, thousands of supporters gathered in the capital, Niamey, to rally around the coup leaders.

In Mali, protesters flooded the streets in 2020 to welcome the military’s ousting of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. In Guinea, crowds rallied behind the junta after Alpha Condé was removed in 2021. And in Burkina Faso, both 2022 coups were met with widespread approval.

International responses: The international community’s response sends equally powerful signals. When those responses are weak, delayed, or inconsistent – such as the absence of meaningful sanctions, token aid suspensions, or symbolic suspensions from regional bodies – they can send the message that the illegal seizure of power carries few legitimate consequences.

International responses to recent coups have been mixed. Some, like Niger’s, triggered strong initial reactions, including sanctions and threats of military intervention.

But in Chad, Mahamat Déby’s 2021 takeover was effectively legitimised by key international actors, which portrayed it as a necessary step for stability following the battlefield death of his father, President Idriss Déby, at the hands of rebel forces.

In Guinea and Gabon, regional suspensions were largely symbolic, with little pressure to restore civilian rule. In Mali and Burkina Faso, transitional timelines have been extended repeatedly without much pushback.

The inconsistency signals to coup leaders that seizing power may provoke outrage, but rarely lasting consequences.

Coup leaders learn from one another: Contagion isn’t limited to the moment of takeover. Coup leaders also draw lessons from how others entrench themselves afterwards. They watch to see which tactics succeed in defusing opposition and extending their grip on power.

Entrenched military rule has become the norm across recent coup countries. On average, military rulers have remained in power for nearly 1,000 days since the start of the current wave. Before this wave, military leaders had retained power on average for 22 days since the year 2000.

In Chad, Mahamat Déby secured his grip through a contested 2024 election. Gabon’s Nguema followed in 2025, winning nearly 90% of the vote after constitutional changes cleared the path. In both cases, elections were used to re-brand military regimes as democratic, even as the role of the armed forces remains unchanged.

Connecting the dots

Coup governments across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have shifted away from western alliances and towards Russia, deepening military and economic ties. All three exited the Economic Community of West African States and formed the Alliance of Sahel States, denouncing regional pressure.

Aligning with Russia offers these regimes external support and a veneer of sovereignty, while legitimising authoritarianism as independence.

The final lesson is clear: when coups are treated as isolated rather than interconnected, it’s likely that more will follow. Would-be plotters are watching how citizens react, how the world responds, and how other coup leaders consolidate power.

When the message they receive is that coups are tolerable, survivable and even rewarded, the deterrent effect weakens.

Poema Sumrow, a Baker Institute researcher, contributed to this article

– Coups in west Africa have five things in common: knowing what they are is key to defending democracy
– https://theconversation.com/coups-in-west-africa-have-five-things-in-common-knowing-what-they-are-is-key-to-defending-democracy-258890

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Derek Yu, Professor, Economics, University of the Western Cape

Child labour is a big concern across the world. It is particularly acute in countries in the global south, where it is estimated that about 160 million children are engaged in child labour, about 87 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

A range of countries have sought to outlaw child labour because it denies children their childhood as well as physical and mental development.

In South Africa data on the work activities of children aged between 7 and 17 years are collected in the Survey of Activities of Young People, conducted by Statistics South Africa. Despite the survey having taken place four times (1999, 2010, 2015 and 2019), the dataset has been seriously under-used. There has hardly been any comprehensive research done on the state of South Africa’s child labour and child work activities.

In a recently published study we looked at child labour activities in the country. We compared the 2010, 2015 and 2019 Survey of Activities of Young People.

We first looked at personal and geographical characteristics of children, such as their gender, ethnic group and province of residence. We went on to look at their work activities, as well as the relationship (if any) between adults’ employment status and the probability of children from the same households having to work.

The reason we chose to look at the relationship between child labour and work activities of adults is that South Africa has an extremely high level of unemployment. At the end of 2024 the unemployment rate was 31.8%.

The Basic Conditions of Employment Act, which was passed in 1997, bans the employment of children until the last school day of the year when they turn 15 years old. Nonetheless, as some adult household members struggle to find work successfully, it is possible that child members of households are exploited to help the households survive financially.

Two striking and alarming findings stand out from the study.

First, the fewer adults were employed in a household, the more likely it was that children in the household were working. Secondly, the presence of child labour in the household had a discouraging impact on the adult members’ job-seeking action.

The first key finding implies that if adults were employed, children might not be working. The second implies that jobless adult members most likely relied on the (illegal) income earned by the child labour, discouraging the adults from seeking work actively.

The number of children working in South Africa has dropped from 778,000 in 2010 to 577,000 in 2019. This downward trend implies the success of South African legislation in prohibiting child labour over the years. But, we conclude, laws and regulations are not enough. In South Africa, the enforcement as well as the public awareness and understanding of the child labour related legislation must be improved to safeguard children.

Thus, a coordinated programme of action by the government is important to bring all stakeholders into the fight against child labour and unemployment of the working-age population.

About the survey

The Survey of Activities of Young People was first introduced in 1999 by Statistics South Africa, two years after the 1997 legislation that banned child labour. However, since the 1999 survey was not linked to the Labour Force Survey and the 1999 survey questions were asked very differently from the 2010, 2015 and 2019 waves, we decided to exclude the 1999 survey wave from the analysis. Hence, we focus on examining the 2010, 2015 and 2019 results, notably because these three waves of data about young people are linked to the Labour Force Survey data taking place in the same year.

This makes it possible to investigate the relationship between the employment status of child and adult household members.

The 2019 survey findings show that, if a household had no employed adult members, the probability of the child from the same household ending up as child labour was 6.5%.

If the household had one employed adult member, child labour probability dropped to 4.7%. Lastly, if the household had at least two employed adult members, child labour likelihood decreased further to 2.7%.

Using the same 2019 data, we found that if a household had no child involved in labour, the probability of an adult member from the same household seeking work in the labour market was 60%. Adult members’ labour force participation rate from households where at least once child worked as child labour was much lower at 44%.

Looking at other child labour statistics, we found that the majority (90%) of working children were Africans; above 60% were in the illegal age cohort of 7-14 years; and most were living in the rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Eastern Cape.

In addition, 98% of them were still attending school while working as child labour.

Lastly, most child labour worked 1-5 hours per week in elementary occupations in the wholesale and retail industry. The top three reasons for children working were “to obtain pocket money”, “to assist family with money” and “duty to help family”.

The road ahead

Some children spent many hours on household chores (which is not classified as child labour, strictly speaking). Parents, employers and the community must be educated about the dangers of long hours on domestic chores and even child labour.

The government should consolidate its infrastructure development programmes, especially the delivery of electricity, water and sanitation in areas where children spend time on domestic chores. These actions will shorten the duration of child household chores and allow children more time for school activities. The surveys used for the study did not include questions about specific activities children were involved in. They only asked if the child was involved in chores such as cleaning, cooking and looking after elderly members.

It is also worthwhile if questions relating to child labour are included in the child questionnaire of the National Income Dynamics Study (the only national panel data survey in South Africa) to more thoroughly investigate whether child labour is a short-term or long-term phenomenon, and whether there is any relationship between poverty (and receipt of social grants) and child labour incidence.

Lastly, it has been six years since the Survey of Activities of Young People was last conducted. It is time for Statistics South Africa to collect the latest data on the state of child labour in the country.

This article is based on a journal article which the writers co-authored with Clinton Herwel (Economics Masters student at the University of the Western Cape).

– Child labour numbers rise in homes where adults are jobless – South African study
– https://theconversation.com/child-labour-numbers-rise-in-homes-where-adults-are-jobless-south-african-study-259398