Africa's Coup Problem: Understanding the Rise of Military Takeovers

Africa's military takeovers have surged in the past few years, with Madagascar being the latest country to fall to a coup. Our research team has studied 299 coup attempts globally from 1946 through 2025 and found that even as coups have declined globally, they remain relatively high in Africa. Since 2020, the continent has seen 10 successful coups across eight countries. The reasons behind coup success and failure are complex, and our data suggests that certain conditions are more likely to lead to a successful takeover.

Key Takeaways:

• A coup is a seizure of executive power involving one or more concrete, observable, and illegal actions by security personnel or civilian officials, as seen in Madagascar's military takeover.
• Our research team has identified several factors that contribute to coup success, including government insiders, senior military officers, and mass pro-coup mobilization, which are all characteristics of the Madagascar coup.
• Coups are more likely to succeed when there is low levels of coup violence, a unified security forces command, and a history of prior successful coups, as seen in Madagascar.
• Africa is the most coup-prone region due to its poverty, ethnic diversity, and history of British and French colonialism.
• The African Union's anti-coup norms have weakened since 2020, allowing new post-coup governments to become more resilient to sanctions and drawing support from authoritarian governments like Russia and China.
• Madagascar is not an isolated case; military actors have also been involved in coups in Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Sudan since 2020.

Statistics:

• Since 1946, our research team has documented 299 coup attempts globally, with 299 successful coups (approximately 50%).
• In Africa, 111 out of 225 coup attempts were successful since 1946 (approximately 49%).
• 10 successful coups have taken place in Africa since 2020, across eight countries.
• 85% of coups that do not escalate into civil-war levels of violence (i.e., fewer than 1,000 fatalities) succeed.
• Less than 40% of coups that result in over 1,000 fatalities succeed.

Sources:

• John Joseph Chin, "Africa's 'coup contagion': Why some military takeovers succeed and others fail", The Conversation (2022)
• Paul Collier, "Why Africa is the most coup-prone region", The Conversation (2016)
• "Madagascar's coup: Why Africa's military takeover problem is becoming a continental issue", BBC News (2022)