For many years, coups in Africa seemed a thing of the past. But in the 2020s they are back with a vengeance: the nine this decade account for more than a third of successful African putsches this century. At this rate there will be more of them in the 2020s than in any decade since the 1960s.

Aside from the latest one, in Gabon on August 30th, the seizures of power have been in the “coup belt”. It is possible, if inadvisable, to walk some 6,000km from the Atlantic coast of west Africa to the shore of the Red Sea and stride only through countries where there have been coups in the past three years (see map). The trek from Guinea to Sudan would cross the Sahel, the region south of the Sahara where there have been two coups each in Mali and Burkina Faso since August 2020, and one in Niger in July.

Africa—which covers an area larger than America, China, India, Japan and western Europe combined—is more than its coup belt. Yet the takeovers are part of a much broader political crisis. The most recent surveys by Afrobarometer, a pollster, find that in 24 of 30 countries approval of military rule has risen since 2014.

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Democracy is under threat from graft, stagnation and violence https://t.co/FupUyTcOkU

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) October 3, 2023

Islamist militants in Mali began a blockade of Timbuktu by cutting road access in August and then shut off river and air routes in an offensive that has put the city once again on the frontline of a jihadist insurgency.

The bombing began soon after. On Sept. 21, witnesses said rockets hit a hospital, killing two children, and landed near a school where survivors of a passenger boat attack that killed more than 100 people were sheltering.

“Our worry is the shelling,” businessman Sory Touré said in Timbuktu, which was occupied by jihadists a decade ago. “It creates a real psychosis and leaves a lasting impression. I have this fear within me.”

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Mali in meltdown as militants advance and U.N. withdraws https://t.co/cVfhMM39a5 pic.twitter.com/teqDkM4spf

— Reuters Africa (@ReutersAfrica) October 3, 2023

The 2019 Open Doors World Watch List (WWL) warned of an “increase in sub-Saharan Africa militia” of Daesh (ISIS), which had dispersed after losing territory in the Middle East.

According to the Christian organisation, “instability, corruption, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance” are an ideal scenario for the growth of radical Islamism, which has also “instrumentalised existing identity-based conflicts to forge alliances to strengthen their base and widen the risk they pose to global security”.

A year later, several countries in the Sahel region that were not on the open Doors WWL until now, have become part of the document. Burkina Faso, Niger and Cameroon are some of the territories in which the increase of violence is closely related to the rise of the presence of jihadism in the area.

The International Observatory of Studies on Terrorism has reported that, while in March 2019, coinciding with the defeat of Daesh in Baguz, its last territory in Syria, there were 28 jihadist attacks in the Maghreb and Sahel regions, with a total of 153 deaths. In January 2020, there have already been 77 attacks and 502 deaths, most of them in Burkina Faso, Mali and northern Nigeria.

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The current French operation has been running since 2014, co-ordinating on security issues with Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad.

They are fighting a complex web of jihadist groups that Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou has described as having become “professionals in the art of war”.

An attack by jihadists on an army base earlier this month led to the deaths of more than 70 soldiers in Niger.

In November, 13 French troops died in a helicopter collision during an operation against jihadists in Mali, the biggest single loss of life for the French military since the 1980s.

Regional leaders have called for more international support to tackle the militants but there has also been rising anti-French sentiment and protests in some cities in the region.

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In Niger, there has been a sharp rise in attacks by militants in 2019. And the number of fatalities in neighboring Mali has more than doubled over the past year.

West Africa: Is France losing ground to militants?https://t.co/DGXkT0CWTJ

— Individual-1 (@codename_karla) December 23, 2019

Mali once again reeled Friday under a terrorist attack, the latest violence in a country that has been racked by war for more than half a century. The current battle pits a confusing array of at least five Islamist groups against a weak central government supported by the former colonial power, France, as the United Nations seeks a diplomatic solution and offers military protection in some areas.

The latest attack, on the Radisson Blu hotel in the Mali capital of Bamako, takes on a special urgency as France tries to deal from last week’s devastating Islamist militant violence that left 130 dead.

That attack was carried out by Islamic State, not known to be directly involved in Mali. But its supporters celebrated the Mali attack using the Twitter hashtags #IslamicState, #ParisIsBurning and #Mali_Is_Burning.

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People of faith in countries struggling to combat the world’s worst outbreak of Ebola should not meet in large numbers, the UK’s Archbishop of York has said.

Dr John Sentamu, a senior Anglican cleric, urged people in countries such as Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia to practice their faith alone or in small groups, to help prevent the spread of the virus.

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