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| ©Gaetan M-Antchouwet via REUTERS |
African leaders are working on responding to the recent military coup in Gabon, which ousted President Ali Bongo and installed a general as head of state. The coup ends the Bongo family dynasty's nearly six decades in power and creates a new problem for the region that has struggled to deal with eight coups since 2020. Nigeria's recently elected president called it a "contagion of autocracy." Central Africa's political bloc, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), condemned the coup and planned an "imminent" meeting of heads of state to determine how to respond. The African Union's Peace and Security Council will meet on Thursday to discuss the coup. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who chairs the West African bloc ECOWAS, said he is working closely with other African leaders to contain what he called a "contagion of autocracy" spreading across Africa.
The events follow coups in the past four years in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger, erasing democratic gains since the 1990s and raising concerns among foreign powers with regional strategic interests. The coups also showed the limited leverage of African capabilities once the military took over. ECOWAS threatened military intervention in Niger after a coup there on July 26, but the junta has not backed down. Military leaders elsewhere have also resisted international pressure, such as in Mali, but they have managed to hold on to power, and some have even gained widespread support.
Hundreds celebrated the coup in Gabon's capital, Libreville, although security forces guarded the main intersections and thoroughfares. Bongo's popularity had worn thin amid claims of corruption, sham elections, and a failure to spend more of Gabon's oil and mineral wealth on the country's poor. The African Union, former colonial power France, the United States, Canada, and Britain have expressed concern about the coup but have not directly called for reinstating Bongo. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the election had been full of irregularities and rejected the seizure of power by force.
