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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***The coup in Gabon on August 30, 2023, marked the eighth successful military coup in sub-Saharan Africa since 2020, primarily in Francophone countries. These coups come as Russia continues to establish itself as a security guarantor on the continent – even in the wake of Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death – and Chinese investment in Africa continues to grow. We asked four experts to tell us more about what is behind this wave of putsches and what could come next.Read more below. Ebenezer Obadare Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies, Council on Foreign RelationsWhile the recent military takeover in Gabon has rightly deepened anxiety about the fate of Africa’s young democracies and transitioning societies, on a different note, it has also highlighted common frustration with regimes that are democratic in name, but profoundly illiberal in every other respect. The outpouring of popular support in favor of military intervention is one marker of this frustration.  Advocates for liberal democracy in the region will have to confront the challenge of making a robust case for a democratic system that, beyond formal tenets like regular elections, takes seriously popular concern and agitation for tangible socioeconomic and political outcomes. Raphael Parens Eurasia Fellow Foreign Policy Research InstituteA recent wave of coups has unsettled West Africa, including in Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, alongside another coup in Gabon. These coups reflect different motives and problem sets in each specific country and region, but they demonstrate profound issues in each nation’s civil-military relationship. In West Africa, coup leaders blame jihadism and French counter-terror failures