Benin: Can Western-style democracy work in post-colonial Africa?

WHEN gunfire echoed through Cotonou, Benin, last Sunday and a small group of soldiers appeared on national TV claiming to have removed President Patrice Talon, the reaction felt painfully familiar.

- CHLOE MALULEKE

Another coup attempt. Another West African country in crisis. Another reminder that the region many once saw as the de facto leader of Africa's transition toward democracy is now struggling to stay upright.

The coup attempt in Benin collapsed within hours, thanks in part to Nigeria stepping in quickly but we would be wrong to treat it as a onceoff. It sits squarely in a pattern we've seen growing across the region. While commentators rushed to condemn the coup leaders, very few paused to interrogate the deeper, more uncomfortable question lurking behind every headline. Is the Western model of democracy, the one inherited at independence actually suited to the political and historical realities of postcolonial African states?

To be clear, this is not a call for military rule or nostalgia for strongmen. It is a challenge or rather a questioning to the political assumption that African countries must simply copy the democratic systems of Europe and North America for stability to follow. Benin's failed coup, like the military takeovers in Mali, Niger and Guinea before it, reveals a pattern that is no longer possible to ignore. The problem is not democracy itself, it is the uncritical adoption of a democratic template crafted in political soil completely different from our own.