The military takeover in one of west Africa’s more stable states has huge implications for democracy on the continent – and the response of its neighbours is crucial
An intrepid traveller would now be hard-pressed to traverse the African continent at its widest point, passing from the Red Sea to near the Atlantic, while staying within a country that is not being torn apart by a civil war or recovering from one, has not suffered a military coup since 2021 or is not a failed state occupied by a toxic mix of rapacious politicians, militia and Russian mercenaries.
The traveller’s undoubtedly inadvisable route would take them from the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, at war until last year, then across Sudan, where an internal power struggle within a repressive regime has metastasised into general violence, and into the Central African Republic, now seen by many analysts as the best example on the continent of the worst that can befall a nation.
