Younger Africans more accepting of military rule, according to Afrobarometer survey

Ibrahim Traoré, 36, of Burkina Faso is the youngest military ruler in the continent. (Alexey Danichev/AFP/Sputnik)

• An Afrobarometer survey states that 56% of African youth accept military takeovers when elected leaders abuse power.
• Sixty percent of the young people are dissatisfied with the functionality of democracy in their respective countries.
• Forty percent believe democratically elected leaders in their countries are corrupt.

Four of Africa’s youngest leaders are military rulers, and according to an Afrobarometer survey, young people on the continent expressed a greater willingness to tolerate them compared to older citizens.

The report; African insights 2024: Democracy at risk – the people’s perspective says 56% of youths in between 18 and 35 years old accept military takeovers because they occur “when elected leaders abuse power for their ends”.

Their tolerance of military regimes is higher than those aged 55 years and above, of whom 47% accept military leaders.

Sixty percent of the youth are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in their countries and 40% believe that democratically elected leaders in their countries are corrupt.

Their perceptions are the most negative compared to other age groups. 

The data set from Afrobarometer is drawn from as recently as a decade ago, combining it with the latest surveys. The findings were based on 53 444 face-to-face interviews in 39 countries. 

The youngest military rulers in Africa include Ibrahim Traoré, 36, of Burkina Faso, Mahamat Déby, 39, from Chad, Mali’s Assimi Goïta, 41, and Mamady Doumbouya, 44, from Guinea.

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There are only three other African leaders under the age of 50, but they were democratically elected.

They include Senegal’s Bassirou Diomaye Faye, 44, Abiy Ahmed, 47, of Ethiopia (although he is a former military officer), and Andry Rajoelina, 49, from Madagascar.

The military leaders rose to power in a chain reaction of events in the Sahel region, where dissatisfaction with democracy has been endemic in the past four years.

One of the graphics from the study that shows the military preferences. (Supplied/Afrobarometer survery)

According to Afrobarometer, the reason could be the youth “are more likely than their elders to be dissatisfied with the way democracy works in their countries”.

In recent coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, Gabon – and adding the constitutional coups in Tunisia, Chad, and Sudan – the pattern is similar: the civilian leaders were accused of corruption and economic mismanagement.

According to Afrobarometer, putschists appeal directly to what the youth demand from civilian governments.

In an explainer, Afrobarometer said:

The longest-serving heads of state in Africa came to power through coups in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Like their young counterparts who came in through coups recently, they promised to return power to civilian rule but they never did. 

Top of the list is Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, who has clocked 43 years in power.

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