Chart of the week: Three decades of coups in Africa

15 current world leaders assumed power via a coup. Of these 15, nine are in Africa although three of those, Teodoro Obiang in Equatorial Guinea, Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, and the Congo’s Denis Sassou Nguesso, have since “legitimised” themselves via elections. Since 1990, there have been 82 coup attempts on the African continent. These include palace coups, rebellions and mutinies. Three of them, two in South Africa and the last in Ethiopia, have been regional coups where attempts were made to overthrow regional governments. Of the 82 coup attempts, 41 have been successful, indicating a 50% success rate. The coup in Tunisia was a constitutional coup in which President Kais Saied illegally expanded his powers. Four of those we classified as unsuccessful achieved their initial aims of removing the sovereign, but in all cases, we ultimately unsucessful because the said sovereign was returned to power, due to external intervention in three cases. 26 of these coup attempts happened in the 1990s, 13 in the 2000s, 36 in the 2010s, and seven since the turn of the decade, indicating a return to the bad old days of coup-making in Africa.