A 2026 International Monetary Fund report estimates that coups “can reduce GDP growth by around 2.3 percentage points in the same year,” and that coups in Africa cut investment by 14.3%. Those are the economic numbers. Behind them are the people coups claim to help: the poor, the unemployed, and minorities promised something better.
Economist and legal scholar John Mukum Mbaku, writing in an analysis published by The Conversation Africa and distributed by AllAfrica on 5 October 2026, argues that military takeovers tend to deliver the opposite of what putschists promise. Coup leaders often justify seizing power by accusing governments of mismanaging the economy, lowering living standards, or allowing instability. Mbaku isn't convinced. Lasting change, he writes, comes through institutional reform, structural economic changes, and engagement with civil society, including the people who create wealth and growth. Military regimes, he says, are usually unable or unwilling to provide the regulatory reforms and legal stability needed to fight poverty.
Who Pays the Price
Mbaku’s studies of military and constitutional takeovers in Egypt, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, and Sudan point to four consequences. Coups worsen intergroup conflict. They undermine the entrepreneurship and wealth creation needed to confront poverty and inequality. They encourage abuse of vulnerable groups, including women, children, and ethnic or religious minorities. They also damage efforts to deepen democracy and the rule of law.
The ethnic dimension is stark. Most African countries are ethnically and religiously diverse, and Mbaku says many post-independence governments never built institutions that help people live together peacefully. That failure has let majority factions tyrannise minorities. After a coup, military elites may fill senior posts with officers from their own ethnic group, a practice known as ethnic stacking, which he says has occurred in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. Marginalised minorities, shut out of power and resources, may turn to violence to protect themselves. Coups can also tear up power-sharing arrangements that once gave those groups a voice.
Rights Suspended, Markets Spooked
Investors need to know tax rules, environmental standards, and operating laws won't change overnight, Mbaku writes. Courts must be reliable and accessible, while clear legal frameworks let long-term trade contracts be enforced. Coups upend that predictability. The IMF found economic damage can persist in subsequent years.
The human rights picture is grimmer. Constitutional democracies protect rights, respect the rule of law, and limit government power; coup leaders often suspend or discard constitutions and bills of rights. Freedom House, an American non-governmental organisation that advocates for democracy, warned in 2023 that a surge of coups in Africa threatened human rights and the rule of law. Military regimes are known for arbitrary detentions and torture. Mbaku says they typically ban peaceful protests, censor media, and jail critics without trial, ruling by decree instead of through an elected legislature or independent judiciary. Forceful changes of government can invite counter-coups, civil conflict, and political violence; he cited Egypt, Sudan, and several Sahelian states.
The Accountability Gap
Mbaku’s prescription is institutional. African states, he says, should develop democratic cultures built on control of the military by elected civilian authorities, with regular elections that let citizens respond when a government fails. Armed forces should be professional and accountable to the constitution, and military education should cover human rights law and the duty to defend the constitution. He also urges states to ban coups, criminalise unconstitutional changes of government, and establish mechanisms to prosecute perpetrators.
Coup leaders, he argues, shouldn't be allowed to run in elections meant to restore democratic order or hold positions of responsibility in state political institutions. The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance provides for this, but Mbaku says the African Union hasn't ensured it happens.
The examples cut both ways. In Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and became president a year later. In Gabon, Gen. Brice Oligui Nguema led the 2023 coup, won the April 2025 presidential election, and was then installed as president.
Public opinion, though, runs strongly against coups. Afrobarometer surveys show high opposition in Zambia (90%), Uganda (87%), Eswatini (85%), and Seychelles (85%). Countries that have avoided coups generally built strong constitutions and institutions, credible elections, and professional armed forces answerable to civilian authority. In South Africa and Namibia, new governments brought armed forces under civilian oversight. Botswana and Mauritius paired good governance with economic development. Coups are harder to stage, Mbaku writes, when political, military, and economic institutions offer effective, peaceful ways to resolve grievances.
Why This Matters:
The cost of a coup isn't abstract. A 14.3% drop in investment means fewer jobs and thinner public revenue in countries already fighting poverty and inequality, and the burden lands hardest on people with the least cushion. When constitutions are suspended and courts sidelined, minorities, women, and children lose legal protections that stand between them and abuse. The countries Mbaku credits with avoiding coups, from Botswana to Mauritius, share a pattern: accountable institutions, civilian control of the military, and credible elections. That points toward strengthening public institutions rather than bypassing them, and toward holding regional bodies like the African Union to commitments already written into the African Charter. Citizens, as the Afrobarometer figures show, have already made their preference clear.