Flying the Coup

Ah, Africa. Another day, another illegal seizure of power. The news is just coming through that there has been a coup in Mauritania, with the President taken hostage and whisked away to places unknown by the country's leading generals. The news has jarred me a little, seeing as I was in Mauritania a little over a year ago, and I did take quite a shine to this nation of 3 million people and Allah-knows how many camels. Despite being a largely unpopulated expanse of Saharan sand, the country has its fair share of political problems, most stemming from its position on the fault-line between Arab- and sub-Saharan Africa, its recent embrace of fundamentalist Islamic causes, and its sad history as a French colony.

I wish les Maures all the best, and I hope nobody gets hurt in this calamity. Doubtless the dust (or sand) will settle, and the long-suffering population will find themselves under the control of yet another corrupt and unelected leader, and simply get on with the job of surviving. Then, a few years down the track, there will be a push for greater democracy, followed by some flawed elections, then a period of misrule by the new government, and then, to correct the balance...another coup.

Which brings me to my topic for today - coups in Africa. What a stereotype. They have become so cliched in that continent, that now, whenever I see the word 'coup', I instantly presume that it has happened in one of Africa's 53 nations. (Quick digression - why do the French have a word for coup, and we don't, having to use theirs? And why do we use the Spanish word for junta? Surely we can come up with some English alternatives? Suggestions, please...)

Military takeovers do seem to happen a lot in Africa. Or, at least, most people think they do. I am guilty of such presumption, and I was in Africa for ten months last year. I travelled through 20 countries, and didn't see one coup. Admittedly, there was a contested election in Kenya a few months after I was there, but no direct throwing-over of any ruling parties.

So what are the stats? Well, they're actually pretty interesting.

• From 1960 until 2001, there were 191 attempted coups in Africa, or roughly 5 annually. 82 were successful, or about 2 per year. That means each country in Africa has experienced roughly 1.5 coups in the past 40 years. The success rate of coups has declined since the 1960s, but is still at around 40%.
• Europe has had the fewest coups - 18 between 1946-2006, or roughly one every three years. All of those coups were in just 8 countries. Now, the fun part - see if you can name them!
• The Americas was by far the most coup-prone region, in the 1940s and 1950s.
• The five (confirmed) coups since 2000 have been in - Fiji (twice), the Solomons, Thailand, and the Philippines. So it looks like our backyard is the new place to put on a putsch!
• Coups tend to happen where they have happened before - 78% of countries that experienced a coup, actually experienced more than one.
• Sub-Saharan Africa alone has accounted for 44% of the world's coups since 1946. Add on North Africa and the figure shoots up to 55% or so.
• There are now roughly 6 coup attempts worldwide every year (with four of those in Africa). In the 1970s, the world average was 13.
  
• Only three countries in sub-Saharan Africa have never had a coup - and two of them are island nations away from the mainland (Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Botswana)
  
• The world's most coup-prone country? Bolivia, with 22 coups since 1946. The runners-up are Syria (20), Sudan (18), Nigeria (15), Iraq (15) Comoros (13, including three in one year), Benin (12), and Mauritania (12). Well, maybe we should put Mauritania up into joint 6th place now...

So it seems that Africa does get a lot of coups. It has a quarter of the world's nations, most of them independent only since the 1960s, yet it accounts for over half the coups since the 1940s. And even though it is not Number One, it still has 5 nations in the Top Eight.

And why does it happen so much in Africa? Well, there's a topic for another blog...