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Gabon: A List Of Recent Military Coups In Africa

Published

2 years ago

August 30, 2023

On August 30, top military commanders in Gabon declared on national television that they had assumed power and annulled the results of the election in the country that announced President Ali Bongo’s third term victory.

Africa, especially the western and central regions, has in the last few years become a ‘hub’ for military coups. If successful, the Gabon coup will be the second in two months this year and the eighth since 2020.

Below is a list of recent military coups in the continent

NIGER

On July 26, 2023, members of Niger’s presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum inside his palace, declaring on national television that they were seizing power to address the “deteriorating security situation and bad governance.”

Abdourahamane Tiani, the commander of the presidential guard, was named the new head of state a few days later by the military junta.

The leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been in talks with the Junta to reinstate constitutional order, noting that they will activate ‘standby forces’ if diplomacy fails.

BURKINA FASO

The country had two coups in 2022. In January 2022, Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba ousted President Roch Kabore over failure to contain violence by Islamist militants.

However, on September 30, 2022, Captain Ibrahim Traore seized power from Damiba to become the country’s new leader.

GUINEA

President Alpha Conde was overthrown in September 2021 by special forces leader Colonel Mamady Doumbouya after the former altered the constitution in 2020 to get around restrictions that would have prohibited him from running for a third term, which had led to severe unrest.

ECOWAS thereafter imposed sanctions on Doumbouya, junta leaders, and relatives, rejecting the promise of a transition to democracy in three years.

CHAD

After President Idriss Deby was killed in combat while visiting forces engaged in fighting rebels in the north, the Chadian army seized control of the country in April 2021.

The president’s son, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, was named interim president, which contravenes Chadian law, where the speaker of parliament should have become president.

The unlawful transfer of power sparked rioting in N’Djamena, the country’s capital, which the military eventually put down.

MALI

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was overthrown in August 2020 by a gang of Malian colonels under the command of Assimi Goita. The coup came after anti-government demonstrations about worsening security, contentious elections for the legislature, and corruption charges.

The junta consented to hand over control to an interim administration run by civilians, which will oversee an 18-month transition to free and fair elections in February 2022.

After a clash between the coup leader and the interim president, retired colonel Bah Ndaw, the junta staged a second coup in May 2021. Assimi Goita, who had been acting vice president in the meantime, was promoted to the position of president.

Headline

Trouble Looms As Trump Gives Iran Two Weeks To Avoid US Airstrikes

Published

7 hours ago

June 21, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran had a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could make a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier.

Trump added that he was not inclined to stop Israel attacking Iran because it was “winning,” and was dismissive of European efforts to mediate an end to the conflict.

“I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump told reporters when asked if he could decide to strike Iran before that.

He added that the aim was to “see whether or not people come to their senses.”

Trump had said in a statement on Thursday that he would “make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks” because there was a “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran.

Those comments had been widely seen as opening a two-week window for negotiations to end the war between Israel and Iran, with the European powers rushing to talks with Tehran.

But his latest remarks indicated Trump could still make his decision before that if he feels that there has been no progress towards dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump meanwhile dismissed talks that European powers Britain, France, Germany and the EU had with Iran’s foreign minister in Geneva on Friday.

Europe ‘didn’t help’

“They didn’t help,” he said as he arrived in Morristown, New Jersey, ahead of a fundraising dinner at his nearby golf club.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the talks in Geneva that Tehran would not resume negotiations with the United States until Israel stopped its attacks.

But Trump was reluctant.

“It’s very hard to make that request right now,” Trump said.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody’s losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”

Trump meanwhile doubled down on his claims that Iran is weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb, despite divisions in his own administration about the intelligence behind his assessment.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, said in a report in March that Iran was not close to having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

“She’s wrong,” Trump said of Gabbard, a longtime opponent of US foreign intervention whom Trump tapped to coordinate the sprawling US spy community.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

AFP

Headline

Trump Orders Mass Layoffs At Voice Of America, Other US-funded Media

Published

7 hours ago

June 21, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday ordered mass layoffs at Voice of America and other government-funded media, moving ahead with gutting the outlets despite legal disputes and criticism that US adversaries will benefit.

Kari Lake, a fervent Trump supporter named to a senior role at the US Agency for Global Media, said the notices were a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

Lake said in a statement that she would work with the State Department and Congress to “make sure the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”

Trump issued an order in March that froze Voice of America (VOA) for the first time since it was founded in 1942.

Termination notices were sent to 639 employees on Friday, after previous offers of voluntary departures and dismissals of contractors.

Some 1,400 positions have been eliminated, with only 250 remaining, Lake said.

Voice of America layoffs included journalists from its Persian service who had briefly been brought back to work after Israel attacked Iran a week ago.

Employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, which come even though Congress had already appropriated funding.

The mass firing decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds the US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” the three plaintiffs wrote in a statement.

“Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice,” said the three complainants, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the “decimation of US broadcasting leaves authoritarian propaganda unchecked by US backed independent media and is a perversion of the law and congressional intent.”

“It is a dark day for the truth,” she wrote on X.

Trump frequently attacks media outlets and has scoffed at the so-called editorial firewall at VOA which prevents the government from intervening in its coverage, something he at times has considered too critical of his administration.

One outlet preserved by the mass cuts has been Radio Marti, which broadcasts into Cuba and enjoys support from anti-communist Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.

Other outlets funded by the US government have included Radio Free Asia, which was set up to provide news to Asian countries without a free press and is now operating in a limited capacity.

Radio Free Europe, formed with a similar mission for Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.

AFP

Headline

Thousands Protest In Tehran Against Israel

Published

12 hours ago

June 20, 2025

Editor

Thousands of people joined a protest against Israel in the Iranian capital on Friday after weekly prayers, chanting slogans in support of their leaders, images on state television showed.

“This is the Friday of the Iranian nation’s solidarity and resistance across the country,” the news anchor said.

Footage showed protesters in Tehran holding up photographs of commanders killed since the start of the war with Israel, while others waved the flags of Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“I will sacrifice my life for my leader,” read a protester’s banner, a reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to state television, protests took place in other cities around the country, including in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south.

AFP