Guinea´s junta leader, Mamady Doumbouya, has defended the widespread use of military coups in Africa amidst the intervention of the military in respective countries on the continent, stating that the recent coups are attempts by militaries to save their countries from presidents’ “broken promises.”
Speaking on Thursday at the United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA), Doumbouya rebuffed the western model of democracy in Africa, which he described as an imposition, and asked the western leaders to stop dictating for the continent with condescension.
“It’s time to stop lecturing us and stop treating us with condescension like children. Africans are mature enough to design their own models of governance.
“Africa is suffering from a governance model that has been imposed on it,” he added.
Col. Doumbouya, who led the coup that ousted Guinea’s former president, Alpha Conde, in September 2021 before being subsequently sworn in as the country’s interim president a month later, told the U.N. General Assembly that beyond condemning the coups, global leaders must also “look to and address the deep-rooted causes.”
He, therefore, identified the seat-tight attitude of African leaders, who manipulate their country’s constitutions to elongate their stay in office, as the cause of coups on the continent.
“The putschist is not only the person who takes up arms to overthrow a regime. I want us all to be well aware of the fact that the real putschists, the most numerous, are those who avoid any condemnation—they are those who cheat to manipulate the text of the constitution in order to stay in power eternally.”
The recent upsurge of military incursions into politics in a good number of African countries has raised concerns amongst global observers about whether democratic practices have been eroded on the continent, leading to economic sanctions against the affected countries by the West.
But Doumbouya condemned the hastiness of the West and other developed countries to intervene in Africa´s political crises, saying that Africans are “exhausted by the categorizations with which everyone wants to box us in.”
“We Africans are insulted by the boxes, the categories, which sometimes place us under the influence of the Americans and sometimes under that of the British, the French, the Chinese, and the Turks. Today, the African people are more awake than ever and more than ever determined to take their destiny into their own hands,” the Guinean leader said.
