Domino Effect in Africa, Embarrassment in Paris

What Emmanuel Macron calls an “epidemic” of coups d’etat in Francophone Africa is spreading. Not since the Arab Spring have Paris and other Western capitals seemed so overtaken by events, as a string of supposedly stable strongman regimes fall at the hands of ambitious military officers, often cheered on by a new generation disillusioned by unkept democratic promises. There’s no easy fix, but a new approach is overdue.

The significance of the latest domino to fall — President Ali Bongo in Gabon — is the fact that instability is spreading beyond the Sahel region, where a losing French-backed fight against jihadists has angered locals, emboldened the military toppling of regimes in countries like Mali and Niger, and given inroads to Russia’s Wagner Group. The inability of the West or African regional blocs to reverse these seizures of power probably fueled the urge to oust Bongo — whose family ruled Gabon for 55 years and for a long time was a key partner for Paris’s interests in Africa (more recently pivoting to the Anglosphere).