In an earlier commentary, this column detailed how in the decade beginning 1960 when Mobutu seized power in Congo-Kinshasa (which he renamed Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo), there were no less than 21 coup d'etats in Africa by 1969. In that year, Gadhafi and Said Barre easily seized power in Libya and Somalia, respectively.
Obote was deposed by Idi Amin in Uganda in 1971, and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was ousted in 1974. By 1975, approximately half of the continent's states were led by military or civil-military governments. The coups would only abate after the 1980s with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.
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