The President is Dead, Long Live the President: Succession Crises in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa has the youngest population on earth. The region also hosts several of the world’s oldest and longest-serving national leaders. Concerns about potential succession crises in the region have emerged with the prolonged absence of Cameroon’s 91-year-old President Paul Biya and a public family spat surrounding Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s 80th birthday. However, the crises in the region go deeper than family quarrels. Coups d’état have destabilized countries beyond the Sahel in 2023. Many countries have experienced an increased closure of democratic space, such as Zimbabwe after its 2018 succession struggle. There is a group of “presidents for life” in Sub-Saharan Africa hoping to maintain their rule via dynastic or other planned successions. These fragile transitions risk further destabilizing a region already beset by conflict. Local and external policymakers will need a better playbook to respond to such crises if they hope to stem the tide of military rule and prevent authoritarian consolidation.
The Disappearing President
Following his attendance at the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation in early September, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya had not been seen in public for six weeks. While the 91-year-old president is well-known for indulging in “brief, private stays” at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland, his failure to attend the United Nations General Assembly in late September and the Francophonie Summit in early October rang alarm bells for Cameroonians. This was not Biya’s usual vacation. Soon, reports emerged that Biya was receiving medical treatment for an unspecified health issue. With silence from Cameroonian leadership about the state of the president, rumors spread that the president was incapacitated, comatose, or dead. In response, government authorities released a statement denying that the president was in poor health, banning all speculation on the topic from journalists or citizens on social media.
The immediate crackdown in response to basic demands for accountability illustrates how the Cameroonian government will likely manage an inevitable succession crisis. Upon President Biya’s return to the country in late October, citizens were met with a heavy military presence in the country’s capital, Yaoundé. News outlets reported that influential ruling party members were tasked with mobilizing supporters to line the streets along the route of Biya’s motorcade. Once back in the country, one of his first official acts included an announcement reshuffling several senior positions in the Ministry of Defense—ostensibly as a coup-proofing mechanism. Abruptly changing around or ordering the early retirement of military leadership is common practice, particularly among the “dinosaur regimes” of Central Africa, as they attempt to prevent alternative centers of power or influence from forming beyond the presidency.
November 2024 marks 42 years in power for Biya. The president remains tight-lipped on whether he plans to run for an eighth consecutive term in Cameroon’s next presidential election, scheduled for October next year. Some regional experts have speculated that Biya could try to position his son, Franck, into a high-level role to secure a future dynastic succession. Others predict a power struggle in his inner circle. Influential figures in the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, Cameroon’s ruling party, may vie for power. Recent polls in Cameroon find that 78% of citizens disapprove of the government’s management of the economy. In the Northwest and Southwest of the country, the government is struggling to manage the Anglophone crisis—a separatist insurgency that has led to mass internal displacement and killed thousands of civilians. Despite these challenges, Biya and his inner circle have made it abundantly clear that they are willing to close even more of the already limited democratic space to ensure succession goes their way.
Family Feuds
While Cameroon’s succession battles are shrouded in secrecy, Uganda’s feuds are slugged out in the open. In September 2024, President Yoweri Museveni, who has led the country since 1986, celebrated his 80th birthday. The personalist style of Museveni’s regime means that these celebrations are not a private family matter but extend to the entire population. Across the country, “thanksgiving feasts,” parties, and extravagant cakes and displays were dedicated to the president, many of which were paid for with taxpayer dollars. On social media, citizens and organizations sent their birthday wishes to the president using the #MzeeAt80 (Mzee is an honorific for elders) and #RevolutionaryIs80 hashtag campaigns.
Despite extravagant shows of public support, a public feud among the president’s family overshadowed the festivities. Museveni’s son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who serves as Chief of Defense Forces for Uganda’s military, exchanged insults and accusations with his brother-in-law Odrek Rwabwogo, a senior presidential advisor, via the press and social media. Supposedly, the brothers-in-law are vying to be potential successors to Museveni. He has not yet announced a successor, and will likely remain the candidate for the elections in 2026. Muhoozi has publicly voiced his impatience and launched his political party and presidential campaign last year before abandoning the project a few weeks ago. The existence of Museveni’s plan for succession, deemed “the Muhoozi project,” was leaked publicly more than a decade ago. But the recent spat amongst Museveni’s inner circle indicates that even the best-laid plans can go awry. Muhoozi’s brazen public behavior—which includes threatening to invade Kenya in a late-night X (formerly known as Twitter) post—has drawn concerns over his potential leadership. More concerningly, his ties to the military indicate that he may pull in the security services if his ascendance is challenged.
Mirroring the developments in Cameroon, this debate amongst elites seeking to retain power comes at a time of utmost public frustration in the country. In July, Ugandan activists organized a march to parliament to protest the government’s proposed budget and call out the flagrant corruption in the country. The protesters were met with harsh reprisals from the security services, and received a stern warning from President Museveni that they were “playing with fire.” Recent public polling finds that over 80% of Ugandans perceive some or most officials around the presidency as corrupt. Such a public example of bickering among Museveni’s inner circle over who will take the presidency next offers little comfort to those Ugandans hoping for a more accountable leadership.
Coup Contagion
The recent transition in Gabon offers useful lessons to policymakers who seek to prevent the spread of military regimes in the region. Gabon’s highly manipulated elections in 2023 ended in a military coup d’état. Just as in Cameroon and Uganda, citizens perceived the polls as laying the groundwork for dynastic succession. Similarly, the elections put forth an aging, long-serving, and unpopular leader. This event brought the “coup contagion” of Sub-Saharan Africa out of the Sahel and to regimes previously seen as too entrenched to suffer such an overthrow. The relatively successful efforts of Gabon’s military junta to overcome sanctions and reintegrate into the international system may provide a demonstration for ambitious military leaders in Cameroon and Uganda. When offered similarly undemocratic elections, and deep frustration from electorates, military juntas might anticipate a warm reception from the population.
Zimbabwe’s power struggle in 2018—in which the military intervened when former President Mugabe attempted to place his wife as his successor—should also provide a tale of caution to those attempting to support democratic transitions. Brief hopes that the country might liberalize following the coup were quickly dashed. The military-appointed President Mnangagwa cracked down on civil society and conducted mass arrests of opposition parties to strengthen his position. The case of Zimbabwe exemplifies that as much as external policymakers would like to imagine that any political leader might be better than an existing autocrat, the political insecurity and infighting accompanying “anointed” leaders rarely lead to more democratic outcomes for citizens. Wishful thinking should be no replacement for continued diplomatic pressure on countries to meet credible transition timelines back to civilian rule.
While none of these cases are simple, the leadership of these countries should be dictated by the citizens themselves, not in elite circles. In both Cameroon and Uganda, despite experiencing some of the most cynical forms of democratic window dressing, majorities still support democracy and reject one-party, military, and one-person rule. More than 60% of Cameroon’s and Uganda’s populations are under 25 years old, and these large, youthful populations rate their governments poorly at addressing high unemployment rates and managing the economy. Insurgent movements already within and around each country’s borders could take advantage of a succession’s instability or new grievances under military rule to recruit from this large, frustrated population, risking greater instability and at worst, state collapse.
Lessons From Succession Crises
Cameroon and Uganda illustrate the complex political and personal dynamics Western policymakers can expect from future succession scenarios in Central Africa. While both Biya and Museveni remain in power for now, the complications around their successions are useful opportunities to collect information on where different political factions stand in each country. Based on this information, observers may consider the opportunities and risks of different succession scenarios. Both regimes (in addition to those in Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo) have signaled their resolve to fashion a future succession in their political interest. If policymakers from the United States, the European Union, the African Union, and other stakeholders in the region hope to avoid further authoritarian successions consolidation or potential conflicts, they should learn from past succession crises, and avert the pitfalls of prioritizing short-term stability over long-term legitimacy.
Research from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) has found that previous cases of dynastic succession in Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Togo, led to an immediate increase in conflict-related events in each country. Studies from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies have also found that “violence from militant Islamist groups has doubled in the Sahel since militaries seized power.” These outcomes challenge the notion of “authoritarian stability”—the idea that authoritarian regimes are better suited to manage economic and security challenges—that external partners like the United States and France often rely on to justify security assistance to illiberal regimes.
Despite this evidence, the United States has struggled to respond to coups d’états in the region. U.S. policymakers followed legal requirements to restrict aid to junta governments in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Niger, but seemingly endorsed Chad’s “elections” under a Transitional Military Council, and exacted little consequences for the initial military intervention during Sudan’s democratic revolution. The lack of a unified response reinforces the idea that Western policymakers only care about democracy when it is useful to their ends.
This is not to say that Western or regional policymakers must fully embrace or abandon countries experiencing transitions from long-serving leaders or military rule. Instead, these external partners should direct more diplomatic attention and financial resources to these transitions. While still in its early stages, programs like the U.S. African Development and Political Transitions (ADAPT) system—which offers financial and logistical support to governments that meet democratic transition goals—could serve as a useful model for others who wish to offer assistance to states in transition, without sacrificing democratic goals.
Not all transition governments will seek out Western or regional support, as has been made clear by recent developments in the Sahel. Completely isolating states that signal a willingness to partake in a democratic transition though, only opens the door for Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and other illiberal regimes to expand their influence on the continent and bolster autocracy in the region. While succession can provide a window of opportunity for countries to democratize, the moment is just as vulnerable to entrenching authoritarian rule.
Instead, policymakers hoping to foster long-term stability should recalibrate their response to transition crises by exacting political and economic consequences for actors who attempt extra-constitutional seizures of power. Further, policymakers should focus on supporting local civil society, and offering flexible financial support to governments that credibly engage in transition timelines. Policymakers in the United States, the United Nations, and the African Union should resist the temptation to engage in transactional relationships or prioritize short-term authoritarian “stability” in these scenarios.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: MSN