Will 2026 be the year of the next African coup?

By Dotun Olayemi

As a new year unfolds, the spectre of military intervention continues to stalk the corridors of power across Africa. With a “coup belt” now governing a territory larger than Western Europe and over 90 million people, the deep-seated grievances that fuel putsches are not historical footnotes, they are live wires. The failed attempt in Benin and the successful takeover in Guinea-Bissau, both in late 2025, did not resolve the underlying crises; they merely proved the volatility remains acute. With data showing security and economic conditions worsening under junta rule, 2026’s stability may depend on which fragile government fails to heed the warnings written in the coups of the past.

The core ingredients for upheaval are not just perceived; they are quantified. Populations are disillusioned by leaders who have broken the democratic contract, a betrayal underscored by hard numbers. According to Olugenga Ayanuga, a journalist and public affairs analyst, the manipulation of constitutions for personal gain is a primary trigger, a trend supported by research showing over 20 African leaders have successfully abolished term limits since the 1990s.

“My personal take on a lot of the coups ravaging African countries, especially the West African sub-region, is that there are a lot of factors that have been ignored by past rulers in the democracy. especially for rulers who started out well, but Hubris set in. Due to personal greed. They were able to adjust their national constitutions to accommodate an unlimited presidential tenure. Typical of healthy democracies, it is usually a two-term limit, but for these countries, there was usually a tweaking of the constitution to accommodate unlimited terms for these presidents and once they are successful with that, they usually have a god-complex, making them feel unshakable and like they have gotten what they want. This makes them neglect the masses, turning a deaf ear to foreign diplomacy around them. These are why we have some of these coups,” says Ayanuga.

This alienation, Ayanuga argues, erupts from measurable despair. “We cannot say for sure that the people are losing faith in democracy, but in the particular leaders in those countries. In some of those countries, they attempt to hold an election, but once the leader sees he is losing by the result truncates the process and does not allow the result to be tallied and announced there by quashing the democratic process midway.”

The data gives this frustration a stark frame: pre-coup surveys by Afrobarometer showed less than 40% of citizens in the region trusted their elections. This distrust festers alongside economic collapse. “These are some of the frustrations on the path of the masses generally. When youth unemployment is high, and the future seems bleak. youth unemployment is high, and inflation is skyrocketing through the roof,” Ayanuga states. The numbers bear him out: in Sahel nations, youth unemployment routinely exceeds 30%, while over 40 million people in the Central Sahel now face acute food insecurity.

Grievances in the Barracks

This public anger finds a potent and organised catalyst in the military barracks, where institutional grievances mirror, and are armed, versions of the street’s plight. Ayanuga highlights the dangerous disconnect within security forces themselves, a disparity that turns national defenders into potential threats.

“Another leg to this is that some of this countries’ governments do not take care of their Military. Just like in Nigeria, just yesterday, the Chief of Defence Staff of Nigeria, Olusegun Oluyede, called for the review of the welfare packages for Military and Uniformed men across board. You will see Generals being given a massive amount of money as salary and emoluments. Meanwhile, the foot soldiers from Colonel and below usually survive from hand to mouth. They know if they die in the line of duty, their children will suffer.”

This internal resentment, coupled with the spectacle of a flailing civilian government, creates a powerful temptation for intervention. The soldier facing a jihadist incursion with poor equipment, while reading about his president’s successful third-term bid, becomes a primary risk factor.

Compounding these internal crises are external factors that either fuel discontent or offer new alliances to coup plotters. Ayanuga points to the enduring economic structures in Francophone Africa as a primary source of anti-government rage, a system that quantifiably drains state resources.

“The Second part of it, is the foreign policy and international dimension, in most of our West African countries, especially the francophone countries, where these coups have taken place over time, many of the presidents who were overthrown had relied so much on their colonisers, like France. They become too lazy to think out of the box to work; meanwhile, France is stifling development. You can imagine that most of these countries only keep about 15% of their revenue at home, while about 85% is deposited in the French Central Bank. In fact, most of these countries do not even have their own central bank; they rely on the French Central Bank. France will now use these African countries’ money and borrow from them as loans and aid, and still get interest on it. Also, because most of these leaders of these countries are the Choice of the people, they rely on the French Hegemony to keep them in power. What this does is to keep inflation on the rise, the cost of living expensive, and impoverish the people. All of this eventually brings the military out of the barracks.”

Into this void of disillusionment steps a new external actor: Russia, which offers a seductive, data-driven alternative. Unlike the former colonial power, it provides no-strings security partnerships backed by a robust information warfare toolkit. Reports document dozens of Russia-linked disinformation outlets targeting the Sahel, producing thousands of posts monthly to glorify strongmen and discredit democracies. The failed coup in Benin laid this new battlefield bare, with pro-junta influencers linked to Russian mercenary groups immediately celebrating the attempt. This points to a concerning new trend: an emerging axis of junta states, supported by an estimated 1,000-2,000 Wagner/Africa Corps personnel in Mali alone and funded by lucrative mining concessions, actively undermining neighbouring democracies.

The tragic promise of the coup is that it will fix the very crises that inspired it. The data from the past five years reveals this to be a catastrophic fiction. In Mali, following the 2021 coup and the arrival of Russian mercenaries, civilian fatalities from political violence increased by over 150% in the subsequent two years. In Burkina Faso, the area outside state control has quadrupled since 2021. The juntas have not restored order; they have presided over its collapse. Elections are indefinitely postponed, and the economic stagnation that fueled the coup deepens under sanctions and isolation. The military, having seized power to address grievance, becomes a new, unaccountable source of it.

As 2026 begins, the urgent work of addressing this nexus of failing economies, corrupted institutions, and neglected armies remains largely undone. ECOWAS’s firmer responses offer a deterrent, but not a cure. The question, therefore, is not just if another coup will occur, but where, and whether the coming months will see the continent’s democratic map shrink further under the combined weight of internal failure, quantified despair, and external opportunism. The data suggests the barracks doors are not just open; they are being actively pushed from the outside.

Dotun Olayemi writes from Lagos