Decolonial Coups d’État?

Mouhamadou El Hady Ba, Cheikh Anta Diop University , Dakar

April 30, 2026

UM6P Campus – Benguerir

On April 30, the Center for African Studies (CAS) will host the next seminar in its 2025/2026 “The World Seen from Africa” series, with Dr. Mouhamadou El Hady Ba, a tenured lecturer in logic and analytical philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar (UCAD) and an associate research scholar at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Former Head of the Philosophy Department at FASTEF, Dr. Ba is currently Director of Cultural and Scientific Activities at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.

One interpretation of what is currently happening in West Africa, and more specifically in the Sahel region, is that we are witnessing the completion of the decolonial project that had been interrupted and derailed by the maneuvers of the architects of Françafrique. The coups d’état that gave rise to the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) would therefore be a Hegelian “trick of history” to break free from the colonialism that keeps Africa in a world system that is essentially antithetical to the needs of its population. This interpretation is reinforced by the observation that, while Fanon asserts that decolonization is an essentially violent process, the decolonizations of the 1960s took place relatively smoothly. Smoothly, that is, in a way that maintained the privileges of a transnational ruling class.