How African presidents leave power

By Phillan Zamchiya | 6h ago

President Albert Zafy of Madagascar is the only one who exited office through parliamentary impeachment, a process which is almost absent in post-colonial Africa.

Dear Reader, For some time now, I have been asking myself a simple but important question: how do African presidents actually leave power?

This short article draws from my preliminary analysis of 333 selected executive exits across Africa, between the military removal of Mohamed Naguib in Egypt in 1954 and Guinea-Bissau’s military takeover on November 26, 2025.

I trace how power ends.

Categories remain contested, especially coups, assassinations, resignations, foreign interventions and transitional authorities.

Reader, this is an invitation to think together about the future of Africa.

1) Military coups remained the single most common route of executive exit in postcolonial Africa, accounting for 112 cases (33,4%), underscoring the enduring centrality of the military in the termination of political authority.

2) Parliamentary impeachment is almost absent in post-colonial Africa. Only one identified president, Albert Zafy of Madagascar, exited office this way, representing roughly 0,4% of all executive exits. This underscores the striking weakness, or limited use, of legislative removal mechanisms in postcolonial African executive politics.

3) No sovereign African president has ever been directly removed from office by a final judicial verdict alone.

Keep Reading

Courts have remained far more influential in managing electoral disputes than in decisively terminating presidential rule itself.

4) Peaceful exit after completion of constitutional terms accounted for 48 cases (14,4%), making it the second most common route of executive exit after coups. While authoritarian manipulation and constitutional engineering remain present in some states, this still points to the gradual, if uneven, institutionalisation of constitutional succession in postcolonial Africa.

5) Electoral defeat accounted for 44 executive exits (13,2%), making it the third most common route of presidential departure and suggesting that, despite persistent manipulation and uneven democratic practice, competitive elections have created a limited but significant pathway through which some African leaders are removed from power.

6) Peaceful exits at the end of transitional authority also constituted 44 cases (13,2%), revealing that interim governments and caretaker administrations became a surprisingly widespread mechanism for navigating political rupture, and that transitions in Africa did not always culminate in renewed authoritarian consolidation.

7) Deaths in office from natural causes or illness accounted for 29 exits (8,7%), reflecting the long tenure of some African rulers and the persistence of highly-personalised systems of political authority.

8) Voluntary resignations remained relatively uncommon at 20 cases (6,0%), suggesting that executive power in postcolonial Africa has rarely been relinquished willingly, even during moments of national crisis or declining legitimacy.

9) Resignations under civilian pressure accounted for 12 exits (3,6%), showing that mass protest, civic resistance, and elite pressure have at times succeeded in forcing African leaders from office outside formal electoral channels.

10) Assassinations accounted for nine executive exits (2,7%), revealing how overt political violence occasionally surfaced during moments of intense elite conflict and state crisis.

Yet one of the last widely undisputed cases occurred in 2009 with João Bernardo Vieira of Guinea-Bissau, suggesting that overt assassination has not experienced the resurgence seen in military coups. However, covert forms, including alleged poisoning, radiation exposure, slow-acting toxins, or fatal injuries, remain far more difficult to establish conclusively.

11) Direct foreign military intervention accounted for only five executive exits (1,5%), suggesting that overt external removal of African leaders remained relatively rare, even though foreign powers often operated more indirectly beneath the surface of domestic political and military struggles.

12) Revocations accounted for five executive exits (1,5%), largely reflecting the continued authority of monarchs to dismiss governments or executives within selected African constitutional monarchies, particularly Morocco and Eswatini.

13) Constitutional transitions or the abolition of executive offices accounted for only two cases (0,6%), underscoring how rarely African executive exits have been driven by fundamental constitutional restructuring or institutional redesign.

14) Battlefield exits accounted for only two cases (0,6%), showing that although armed conflict profoundly shaped African politics, very few executives directly exited power while fighting on the battlefield itself, as in the 1976 death of El-Ouali Mustapha Sayed of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

15) Female presidents in post-colonial Africa have, thus far, exited power more peacefully and constitutionally than their male counterparts. Leaders such as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia left office by constitutional term completion, while others, such as Joyce Banda of Malawi, exited through electoral defeat.

A striking number of leaders, including Catherine Samba-Panza, Sylvie Kinigi, and Rose Francine Rogombé, also stepped aside peacefully after their transitional mandates. Yet despite these patterns, women remain exceptionally underrepresented in African executive politics.

Reader, as time allows, we shall explore how these patterns shifted across different historical periods, what forces shaped them, and what they may tell us about the possibilities of building a more democratic Africa in the future.