Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, head of the Army’s special forces and coup leader, waves to the crowd as he arrives at the Palace of the People in Conakry on September 6, 2021.
Journalist, writer and curator of the Wall of Great Africans
What you need to know:
The grievances against regimes that are toppled also sound familiar: corruption, nepotism, clinging to power, abusing the constitution, failing to deal with insecurity, and economic failure.
The soldiers, when they take over, rarely do better, and thus as in Mali, the coup and counter-coup cycle continues.
From the start of 2010 to last weekend, the soldiers have made coup moves 37 times in Africa. That is a surprisingly high number, considering that coups d’état are supposedly out of fashion on this fair continent. Very few of them succeed, though. Counting the ouster of Guinea President Alpha Condé on Sunday by his trusted lieutenant Col Mamady Doumbouya, only nine of them have succeeded.
Not bad for an 11-year period, considering that there was a time in Africa when you had nine failed and successful coups in a week. Of these nine successful coups, five have been in West Africa: February 18, 2010, in Niger; March 22, 2012, in Mali; August 19, 2020, in Mali again; May 24, 2021, in Mali; and the latest, September 5, in Guinea.
