West Africa’s post 2020 coups and decoloniality

The post-2020 coups that took place in West Africa’s former French colonies in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger had stark contradictions with the traditional coups in West Africa in that they challenged leaders who had cordial relations with the West, predominantly France. The coups showed a drive towards delinking with French influence and the countries to draw their course outside the rigid colonial spheres of influence. This article attempts to analyze these coups through the decolonial lenses. The author follows the decolonial route given that while many analyses have been made, they centered more on discussing the return of military intervention against the democratic gains in the region, or a simplified questioning of whether France has lost its colonial empire in Africa. This stance does not look at the deeper drivers of coloniality and its impact on the current coup, which this paper attempts to do.