In Africa, one doesn’t need to look hard these days to spot crises.

Case in point: the broad swath of the continent known as the Sahel. There, in recent years, one country after another—Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Guinea—has seen ineffectual elected governments fall to military juntas.

In Africa, one doesn’t need to look hard these days to spot crises.

Case in point: the broad swath of the continent known as the Sahel. There, in recent years, one country after another—Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Guinea—has seen ineffectual elected governments fall to military juntas.

In Africa, soldiers face constant and seemingly irresistible temptation to step into political power vacuums. But since the 1960s, military regimes have been unable to offer cures for the problems of the continent’s struggling nations. Their record of instilling stability and economic health has been remarkably dismal.

Crises have arisen in many directions, from the deadly civil war in Sudan, to the spread of Islamic insurgencies in Nigeria and other coastal nations, to the seemingly endless fiddling with constitutions in countries such as Ivory Coast. Although less brutish than classic coup d’états, “constitutional coups” are closely related and allow leaders to perpetuate their rule, often for life.

In recent days, Cameroon has offered the sad spectacle of a country whose leader has so completely dropped out of public view during an extended stay in Europe that rumors of his death spread widely. That 91-year-old president, Paul Biya, has been in power since 1982. In an absurdist bid to quell speculation about Biya’s condition, his government forbade media discussion about his health or whereabouts on “national security” grounds.

As different as each of these countries’ circumstances might seem, there is a common underlying denominator: a state’s inability to assure even the basic well-being of its citizens. This includes services almost taken for granted on other continents, from universal access to electricity and clean water to decent and........

© Foreign Policy