Rwandan President Paul Kagame has sparked fresh debate across the continent after declaring that not all coups are inherently bad and warning that the wave of Gen Z–led protests spreading across Africa is a sign that something is deeply wrong within governments.
Speaking during a media briefing in Kigali on Thursday, Kagame delivered one of his bluntest assessments yet on the political tremors rocking West, Central and East Africa.
His comments come barely days after an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau and amid heightened political instability from the Sahel to the Indian Ocean.
Kagame said African leaders should stop pretending that coups occur in a vacuum.
According to him, many are the inevitable outcome of years of corruption, misrule and stolen elections that leave citizens desperate and soldiers emboldened.
He insisted there are “good coups” and “bad coups,” arguing that some arise out of frustration with entrenched political elites who have plundered their nations while hiding behind weak institutions.
He said a bad coup is one driven by reckless officers intoxicated by the power of their guns.
The good kind, he said, occurs when citizens or a faction within the state finally decides “enough is enough” after being lied to and robbed for too long.
Kagame said he felt “vindicated” by the recent pattern of coups, including the chaotic events in Guinea-Bissau and the political breakdown in Madagascar.
He questioned why anyone would be shocked when states with long-running governance failures finally explode.
“What do you know about Guinea-Bissau that tells you such a coup should not have happened?” he asked. “Or even Madagascar? When you look at how these places have been run, why wouldn’t there be a coup?”
His remarks echo a growing sentiment across parts of Africa where military takeovers, once universally condemned, are increasingly seen by frustrated citizens as a crude reset button in countries where the political class has closed all democratic exits.
Kagame also weighed in on the rising Gen Z protest movements shaking East Africa.
From Kenya’s anti-finance-bill uprising to youth demonstrations in Uganda and the more recent unrest in Tanzania, Kagame said these protests are not random flare-ups but clear signs that governments have lost touch with their populations.
He said young people are demanding transparency, fairness and honesty, and leaders must explain openly why their countries are grappling with unemployment, debt and crumbling services.
He warned that violence arises when citizens believe their leaders are living lavishly while the public suffers.
“If there is news that this man is building a castle in Paris or New York or Brussels, they will come for your throat,” Kagame said. “It’s a matter of time.”
The Rwandan leader urged the African Union to design a system that can hold sitting civilian leaders accountable when they rig elections, loot public funds or trigger crises that eventually invite coups.
Kagame’s stance is certain to ignite controversy. Human rights organisations routinely accuse his government of suppressing dissent, even as he positions himself as a continental voice on governance reform.
But his comments will resonate with many young Africans who feel betrayed by old political orders and are increasingly taking to the streets—or supporting anyone who can upend the system.
As the coup wave continues and Gen Z unrest rises, Kagame’s remarks capture a shifting political mood on a continent where trust in civilian rulers has collapsed and the next shock could erupt anywhere.
BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau — When soldiers seized power in this small West African nation on Wednesday, toppling President Umaro Sissoco Embaló just hours before election results were to be announced, the script followed a familiar pattern.
Military officers in fatigues declared they had saved the country from chaos.
The president claimed he had been deposed. Regional powers condemned yet another coup.
But according to a growing chorus of African leaders and opposition figures, the entire spectacle was theater—a carefully staged production with Embaló himself as both victim and director.
“This was not even a palace coup,” said Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former president, who had been in Bissau observing the election for the West African Elders Forum.
“I was looking for the appropriate word to describe it. I could not get that, which is why I called it a ceremonial coup. It was a ceremony conducted by the head of state himself.”
The accusation is extraordinary: that a sitting president would fake his own overthrow to avoid facing voters at the ballot box.
Yet the evidence suggesting Embaló manufactured the crisis is mounting, raising troubling questions about democratic backsliding in a region already battered by military takeovers.
Unlike the coups that have recently convulsed Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, this one had peculiar features from the start.
It was Embaló who first announced his removal from power, calling the French television station France 24 to declare, “I have been deposed.” The military statement came later, almost as an afterthought.
No president had died. No fierce gun battles raged through the capital.
After roughly an hour of gunfire near the electoral commission headquarters on Wednesday evening, an eerie calm settled over Bissau.
By Thursday, Embaló was flying to Senegal on a chartered military flight, not as a captive fleeing violence but apparently by arrangement with the very forces that supposedly overthrew him.
“What happened in Guinea-Bissau was a sham,” Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko told lawmakers, his blunt assessment echoing the skepticism rippling through regional capitals.
The timing of the takeover provides the most damning circumstantial evidence.
Provisional results from Sunday’s presidential election were scheduled to be released Thursday.
While official tallies remain sealed by military order, multiple sources suggested Embaló faced a strong challenge from Fernando Dias, a 47-year-old political newcomer who had surged in the race.
Jonathan told reporters in Abuja on Saturday that the election had been completed and results were essentially known.
“The key thing is that the winner of that election must be announced,” he said, calling on West African leaders to pressure Guinea-Bissau’s new military rulers to release the outcome.
Instead, the High Military Command for the Restoration of Order suspended the electoral process entirely, claiming they had thwarted a plot by unnamed politicians backed by drug barons.
The convenient vagueness of the allegations, combined with the immediate detention of opposition leader and former Prime Minister Domingos Simões Pereira, suggested other motives.
Dias himself accused Embaló of staging “a false coup attempt” because he feared electoral defeat. Local civil society organizations made similar charges, describing it as a “simulated coup” designed to prevent results from emerging.
For Embaló, 53, orchestrating his own removal would fit an established pattern.
Throughout his presidency, which began in 2020, he has repeatedly invoked security threats to consolidate power. After claiming to survive an attempted coup in December 2023, he dissolved parliament.
Guinea-Bissau has functioned without a legislature ever since.
Major-General Horta Inta-a, the new transitional president, salutes during the swearing-in ceremony of Major-General Tomas Djassi as the new chief of staff of the Armed Forces in Bissau/ Reuters
Critics have long accused him of fabricating crises to justify crackdowns on dissent, though he has never responded directly to such allegations.
This time, however, the international community appears less willing to accept the official narrative at face value.
The African Union suspended Guinea-Bissau’s membership Friday, citing the unconstitutional military takeover.
The Economic Community of West African States issued similar sanctions while demanding that soldiers return to their barracks.
Even the European Union called for restoration of constitutional order and completion of the vote count.
Yet the criticism has been carefully calibrated.
No government has explicitly accused Embaló of staging the coup, perhaps reluctant to level such a severe charge without conclusive proof.
Jonathan and Sonko spoke of their suspicions but offered no documentary evidence of coordination between the president and military commanders.
That ambiguity may work in Embaló’s favor.
The new transitional president, Major General Horta Inta-a, has promised elections within a year.
Whether Embaló will be allowed to run again remains unclear, but his safe passage to Senegal suggests he retains significant leverage.
He could return as a civilian candidate, positioning himself as the man who can restore stability to the chaos he may have created.
Guinea-Bissau has endured at least nine coups and attempted coups since winning independence from Portugal in 1974, earning a reputation as one of Africa’s most politically unstable nations.
It has also become a critical transit point for cocaine flowing from South America to Europe, with drug money deeply embedded in political campaigns.
Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo, who directs the Observatory of Illicit Economies in West Africa, noted that major traffickers financed electoral campaigns in the recent vote.
“There is no sign the impact of cocaine on politics and governance in Bissau will decrease,” she said.
Whether genuine or staged, the coup has plunged the country back into turmoil.
Pharmacies remained closed Thursday.
Residents stayed indoors even after the curfew lifted. A professor in Bissau named Julio Gonçalves captured the anxiety gripping the capital: “If somebody is sick, how can he buy medicine or go to the hospital?”
Others expressed weary acceptance of military rule, hoping at least for competent governance. “I am not against the military regime as long as they improve the living conditions in the country,” said Suncar Gassama, a Bissau resident.
For the people of Guinea-Bissau, the distinction between a real coup and a fake one may matter less than the result: another democratic process interrupted, another election result suppressed, another chapter in a long history of violence and instability.
But for Africa, the implications are profound.
If leaders discover they can manufacture coups against themselves to escape accountability, the continent’s already fragile democratic norms face a new and insidious threat.
The question is no longer just whether militaries will respect civilian rule, but whether civilians in power will respect it themselves.
As Jonathan put it in his briefing to Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, regional leaders must insist on transparency. “Let us know the winner of the election,” he said. In Guinea-Bissau, even that basic democratic principle has become a revolutionary demand.
Guinea-Bissau’s deposed President Umaro Sissoco Embaló has arrived in neighbouring Senegal following his release by military forces that toppled his government this week, Senegal’s authorities have announced.
It follows negotiations by the regional West African bloc Ecowas to secure his transfer amid rising tensions in Guinea-Bissau.
Senegal’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Embaló had landed in the country “safe and sound” on a chartered military flight late on Thursday.
The military in Guinea-Bissau has already sworn in a new transitional leader, Gen Horta N’Tam, who will rule the coup-prone country for a year.
Wednesday’s coup came a day before authorities were due to announce the provisional results of a presidential and parliamentary election.
The military has suspended the electoral process and blocked the release of the results.
It said it was acting to thwart a plot by unnamed politicians who had “the support of a well-known drug baron” to destabilise the country, and imposed a night-time curfew.
Sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea, the coup-prone country is known as a drug-trafficking hub where the military has been influential since it gained independence from Portugal in 1974.
Both Embaló and his closest rival Fernando Dias had claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential poll.
Dias was supported by former Prime Minister Domingos Pereira, who had been disqualified from running.
Government sources earlier told the BBC that Dias, Pereira and Interior Minister Botché Candé had also been detained.
The military junta has banned public protests and “all disturbing actions of peace and stability in the country”.
Tension remained high in the capital, Bissau, on Thursday, with most shops and markets closed as soldiers patrolled the streets, news agency AFP reported.
Earlier that day, Gen N’Tam, the Guinea-Bissau army’s chief of staff, was named the country’s new leader for a period of one year.
Gen N’Tam said in a speech that the military had acted “to block operations that aimed to threaten our democracy”.
Shortly after the swearing-in, the military reopened land, air and sea borders that were shut when it announced the coup.
Some civil society groups in Guinea-Bissau have accused Embaló of masterminding a “simulated coup” against himself with the help of the military, saying it was a ruse to block election results from coming out in case he lost.
Dias, who was Embaló’s main challenger, made similar claims, saying it was an “organised coup”.
He told the AFP that he considered himself the president-elect of Guinea-Bissau and believed he won roughly 52% of the vote.
Embaló has not responded to the allegations.
The 53-year leader said he has survived multiple coup attempts during his time in office. However, his critics have previously accused him of fabricating crises in order to crack down on dissent.
Ecowas leaders have suspended Guinea-Bissau from all decision-making organs until constitutional order is restored. In a statement, the bloc ordered the military to return to the barracks, calling its actions a “grave violation of Guinea-Bissau’s constitutional order”.
The African Union (AU) has also condemned the coup and called for respect for the constitutional order.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that he was “deeply concerned” about the situation in Guinea Bissau, calling for an “immediate and unconditional restoration of constitutional order”.
Guinea-Bissau has witnessed at least nine coups or attempted coups over the last five decades.
