Who is benefiting geopolitically from African coups?
A troubling pattern has taken hold across Africa. Since 2020, nine successful military coups have fundamentally altered the political landscape of the continent, concentrated primarily but no longer exclusively in the Sahel region. The October 2025 seizure of power in Madagascar by Colonel Michael Randrianirina, following youth-led protests against President Andry Rajoelina, signals that what analysts once viewed as a regional phenomenon has metastasized into a continental crisis threatening democratic governance across Africa’s 1.4 billion population.
The Architecture of Instability
The mechanics of these power grabs follow a depressingly predictable sequence. Military strongmen have toppled civilian governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, Chad, Sudan, and Gabon, with each coup following a similar trajectory: political instability or popular discontent creates an opening, military forces intervene claiming to restore order, anti-Western rhetoric intensifies, and traditional security partners are expelled. The speed and regularity of these upheavals suggest not isolated incidents but a systematic unraveling of post-colonial political structures.
Even nations that have avoided successful coups face mounting pressure. Nigeria’s late 2025 arrest of over 30 military officers for allegedly plotting to overthrow President Bola Tinubu—followed by his immediate replacement of the entire defense leadership—demonstrates how deeply the coup contagion has penetrated African military establishments. The potential fall of Nigeria, with its 200 million citizens and massive oil reserves, would represent a geopolitical earthquake far exceeding anything witnessed in the Sahel.
Moscow’s Calculated Opportunism
Russia has positioned itself as the primary beneficiary of this instability through a carefully calibrated strategy that combines military support with resource extraction. Wagner mercenaries, now operating under the Africa Corps designation within Russia’s defense ministry, have become the security contractor of choice for embattled juntas from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. Their value proposition is straightforward: they provide regime protection without the democratic conditionality that Western partners typically demand.
The Kremlin’s approach, however, is transactional rather than altruistic. Payment comes in the form of mineral wealth and geopolitical leverage. Operations linked to the late Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin control mining ventures throughout the Central African Republic, including one gold mine valued above $1 billion. The World Gold Council’s estimate that Wagner has generated $2.5 billion from illicit gold trading across Africa since Russia’s Ukraine invasion began reveals the financial logic undergirding Moscow’s African engagement. As historian Irina Filatova observes, Russia requires both funding and influence—and Africa’s military governments are providing both in exchange for survival.
This arrangement serves Russia’s broader strategic imperatives. Amid Western sanctions designed to starve Moscow’s war machine, African gold and diamonds provide crucial alternative revenue streams. Simultaneously, each junta that aligns with Russia represents another diplomatic victory for the Kremlin, expanding its sphere of influence while contracting Western reach.
The Human Toll Behind Geopolitical Maneuvering
The humanitarian consequences of Russia’s expansion receive far less attention than the geopolitical implications, yet they are devastating. Human Rights Watch documentation reveals a pattern of summary executions, torture, and systematic violence against civilians by Wagner forces operating across multiple African nations since 2019. In Mali, these mercenaries have suffered significant casualties fighting insurgents, yet their deployment continues to expand rather than contract.
The populations living under junta rule face a double burden: authoritarian governance at home and the presence of foreign forces accountable to no one. The initial promises of military rulers to restore stability and eventually return to civilian rule have proven hollow. Instead, power consolidation has become the norm.
The Sino-Russian Division of Labor
While Russia secures regimes through military force, China pursues economic dominance through a complementary strategy. Beijing has maintained its position as Africa’s largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years, financing massive infrastructure projects across the continent through its Belt and Road Initiative. This division of labor proves mutually beneficial: Russia handles immediate security concerns while China builds long-term economic dependencies.
The partnership reveals a sophisticated understanding of how to establish durable influence. Military protection addresses the juntas’ short-term survival needs, while infrastructure investment creates lasting economic relationships that transcend individual leaders or regimes.
Western Retreat and Recrimination
Traditional Western partners find themselves sidelined with stunning rapidity. Ivory Coast and Chad have joined Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in demanding the withdrawal of French and other Western military forces from their territories. French President Emmanuel Macron’s complaints about African ingratitude capture the bewilderment in Paris and Washington as partnerships cultivated over decades dissolve seemingly overnight.
This retreat represents more than wounded pride; it reflects a fundamental shift in how African governments view their security options. The democratic conditionality and transparency requirements that Western nations attach to security assistance are increasingly viewed as unwelcome interference rather than necessary guardrails. Authoritarian partners offering unconditioned support become more attractive by comparison.
The Democratic Reversal
Perhaps most concerning is the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions across coup-affected nations. In Mali, the junta has dissolved all political parties to consolidate control. Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traoré extended his transitional period by five years while declaring himself eligible for the presidency. Gabon’s General Brice Oligui Nguema rewrote the constitution, installed loyalists throughout the judiciary, and claimed victory in a disputed election with 90 percent of the vote—a figure that would make even the most shameless autocrat blush.
These actions reveal that military coups are not temporary aberrations but potential points of permanent authoritarian consolidation. The pattern suggests that Africa faces not just a wave of coups but a fundamental regression in democratic governance that could define the continent’s political trajectory for decades.
Implications and Trajectories
The cascade of military takeovers across Africa represents more than political instability; it signals a comprehensive restructuring of the continent’s international relationships and internal governance models. Several factors make this wave particularly consequential:
Scale and momentum: Nine successful coups in five years, with multiple attempted coups in additional countries, indicates systemic rather than localized problems. The geographic spread from West Africa to the Indian Ocean suggests vulnerabilities across diverse political and economic contexts.
Great power competition: The struggle for African influence has become a proxy battlefield for larger global conflicts, with Russia and China coordinating to displace Western influence while pursuing complementary strategic objectives.
Resource exploitation: The extraction of mineral wealth by Russian-aligned entities under opaque arrangements raises questions about whether African nations are trading one form of exploitation for another, with fewer safeguards and less accountability.
Democratic backsliding: The transformation of temporary military rule into permanent authoritarian governance threatens to reverse decades of democratic progress across the continent.
For Africa’s populations, the central question remains unanswered: what kind of future are these shifting alliances constructing? Military juntas allied with Moscow show no inclination toward democratic restoration despite initial pledges. The combination of authoritarian governance, foreign military presence, resource extraction, and democratic institution dismantling suggests a future defined by instability, repression, and external exploitation rather than self-determined development.
The new scramble for Africa differs from its colonial predecessor in form but shares troubling similarities in substance. Where 19th-century European powers competed for territorial control and resource access, 21st-century powers compete for influence and extraction rights. The mechanism has changed, but the fundamental dynamic—external powers pursuing their interests at African expense—remains disturbingly familiar. Whether African nations can navigate these pressures while building genuinely independent, democratic, and prosperous societies will define the continent’s trajectory for generations to come.
