In Senegal, the president tried to cancel an election. In Niger, a military coup overthrew an elected president, who eight months later is still imprisoned in the presidential palace. In Chad, the leading opposition politician was killed in a shootout with security forces. And in Tunisia, once the only democratic success story of the Arab Spring uprisings, the president is leading the state toward increasing authoritarianism.
Democracy is in trouble in the former French colonies in Africa. Both ways it is overthrown—by elected officials tasked with supporting it, or by coup d’états who topple governments—are manifestations of the same malaise, according to some experts.
After gaining independence from France in the 1960s, the newly emerging states modeled their constitutions after their French constitutions, concentrating power in the hands of presidents. And France maintained a network of business and political ties with its former colonies – a system known as Françafrique – often supporting corrupt governments. These are among the reasons cited by analysts for the democratic crisis in these countries.
While a majority of Africans polled still say they prefer democracy to other forms of government, support for it is declining in Africa, while approval of military rule is rising — doubling since 2000. This change is happening much faster in the former France colonies than in former British ones, according to Boniface Dulani, director of research for Afrobarometer, a nonpartisan research organization.
“People have become disenchanted with democracy,” he said.
The ground has been prepared for military withdrawals. Eight of the nine successful coups in Africa since 2020 have taken place in former French colonies — the only exception being Sudan, a former British colony. Former French colonies have been “champions of coups” as well as champions of a hollow pretense of “constitutional order” and democracy, said Ndongo Samba Sylla, co-author of a new book on France and its former African colonies.
“Ordinary people, it is against your constitutional order,” Mr Sylla said. “We call this a despotic order.”
None of the nine African countries ranked as “free” by Freedom House, a pro-democracy group, is a former French colony. And half of the continent’s 20 former French colonies received the group’s worst ranking: “not free.” All of them scored lower on Freedom House’s freedom scale in 2023 than in 2019, except Djibouti and Morocco, which remained the same, and Mauritania, which after decades of military rule recently began holding elections.
And military rule has returned, although junta leaders often speak the language of democracy, calling themselves “transitional governments,” promising elections and appointing political ministers.
Guinea, which has been ruled by the military since soldiers stormed the presidential palace in 2021, was due to hold elections in October. But in February, soldiers gathered at the same palace to issue a decree that threatened to delay any elections.
“The government has been dissolved,” a soldier declared, as 19 other junta members and armed soldiers stood behind him in uniform on the palace’s red-carpeted steps.
Senegal has long been seen as an exception to this anti-democratic trend, but in February, President Macky Sall shocked the country by indefinitely postponing elections for his successor, just three weeks before elections were due to begin.
His government has adopted tactics used by others intent on staying in power across French-speaking Africa: shutting down the Internet, banning demonstrations, killing protesters and jailing opposition politicians.
Senegal’s constitutional court reinstated the election, which is now set for this Sunday. And Mr. Sall has just released two key opposition leaders from prison — one a presidential candidate.
Of course, democratic regression is not limited to the former French colonies in Africa. From the United States to Brazil and Hungary to Venezuela, democracy has faced challenges in many countries worldwide. And African countries with no historical ties to France are not exempt: Leaders in Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, for example, do not disagree.
But what the former French colonies have in common are political systems heavily influenced by France with extremely strong presidential powers, which their institutions struggle to keep in check, said Gilles Olakounlé Yabi, founder and CEO of West Africa Citizen Think Tank.
“That legacy is still very much present,” he said.
In Benin in 2021, President Patrice Talon was re-elected after changing electoral rules to make it impossible for anyone but his supporters to run for office. Cameroon’s 91-year-old President Paul Biya has been in power since 1982, after term limits were abolished. Togolese politics has been controlled by the same family since 1963, despite calls for electoral reform. In Ivory Coast, the incumbent, Alassane Ouattara, won a controversial third term in 2020 with 94 percent of the vote, in what opposition members called a “sham election.”
Mr. Yabi calls the malaise “hyper-presidentialism” and has long argued that countries should adopt more detailed constitutions to strengthen checks and balances and rein in individual leaders.
There are non-French-speaking countries that also suffer from “hyper-presidentialism”, Mr Yabi said. But former British colonies in Africa tend to have stronger parliaments and judicial systems that limit the powers of presidents.
The Sahel, the arid strip south of the Sahara, has seen a series of coups. Five years ago, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso had presidents who suppressed opposition, silenced the press or tried to change constitutions. It is now under military rule.
Sweeping change took place across Africa in the 1960s when countries won independence from their colonial rulers, and again at the dawn of multi-party democracy in the 1990s that followed decades of one-party or military rule.
The region is at another “defining moment,” said Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, an analyst with the International Crisis Group who focuses on the Sahel. This time, it is about whether democracy will return to the junta-led countries, which have all promised elections in 2024 but show few signs of their organization.
Many people living under military rule say elections are not a priority. Juntas gain popularity by criticizing France, expelling French soldiers and media groups, and cooperating with Russia — even as citizens struggle to get by, in part as a result of regional sanctions imposed on junta-led countries.
“It’s hell,” admitted Abdoulaye Cissé, a motorcycle dealer in Bamako, the capital of Mali, recently. But he doesn’t want elections because the junta is working hard, he said. “We have to try to support them and give them some time,” he said.
For Mamadou Koné, a security guard in Bamako, the junta represents “a first attempt by African leaders to completely free themselves from colonial oppression.” Rising prices and food shortages are just part of the “heavy price for freedom,” he said.
France’s influence on the continent has shifted and waned in recent decades, with a more recent focus on fighting jihadists in the Sahel. But the perception that he is still pulling the strings is real, analysts say, and is driving politics across French-speaking Africa.
Some presidents and regional organizations considered French allies are tarnished by the connection, such as the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, a confederation of countries often accused of condemning military coups but not power grabs by sitting presidents. When the Niger coup happened, ECOWAS threatened to invade. When the president of Senegal canceled the elections, he only released a statement encouraging him to hold elections.
The leader of the junta in Burkina Faso, who became the world’s youngest president when he takes office in 2022, recently said that the civilian presidents of the ECOWAS alliance countries were coup plotters like him.
“There are many coup plotters in ECOWAS,” Captain Ibrahim Traore said in December, wearing a red beret and desert camouflage as he sat in a gilded chair once occupied by his political predecessor. “They never obeyed their own rules.”
Many West Africans agree and are more open to the military variety of coups than they used to be.
In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, juntas are often seen as representing the people and their interests, while elected leaders are seen as Western—and particularly French—pawns.
“There is a sense that France is really interfering a lot in the region and that a lot of these leaders are basically puppets of France,” said Mr. Dulani, of the Afrobarometer. “Part of this disenchantment with democracy is the extent to which people believe that democratic governments serve France’s interests more than their own.”
Mamadou Tapily contributed reporting from Bamako, Mali.
