Following an army takeover in Niger, there’s now a ‘coup belt’ of military-run countries stretching coast-to-coast across Africa from Guinea to Sudan. A successful coup in Gabon was the Sahel region’s eighth since 2021.
To understand why African youths welcome coup plotters with open arms, we can look at the crisis in Senegal. This country on the Atlantic Ocean coastline was once touted as one of Africa’s most stable democracies. But dozens of protesters have been killed since 2021, an opposition figure is in jail and his political party has been banned.
