When Mali’s military staged a first coup on 18 August 2020, they said they were not planning on holding onto power and promised elections. But after a second coup that overthrew the transitional civilian government in 2021, the military is still in charge. Five years on, the country finds itself mired in criminal and sectarian violence and economic hardship.
Malians welcomed the coup that overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta on 18 August 2020.
General Assimi Goita promised to root out jihadists in the north of the country, which Mali had been unsuccessfully trying to do for nearly a decade with the support of the French military and a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Then Mali experienced its second coup in 2021 and Goita, as interim president, promised "credible, fair and transparent elections" and a handover to civilian rule by June 2022.
But this never came to pass.
Instead, Mali shifted allegiances away from France – from which it severed ties in 2022 – to Russia, which sent mercenaries from its Wagner group to fight with the army.
Rights abuses
In 2023, the Malian army regained control of Kidal, a Tuareg separatist stronghold, but Wagner has been unable to help Mali take back full control of its territory.
Many Malian towns are still controlled by jihadists, and the army and its Russian allies are regularly accused of abuses against civilians.
Earlier this year, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger quit Ecowas to form their own confederation, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), dealing a blow to the credibility of the grouping.
The AES accuses Ecowas of being a tool for what it sees as former colonial ruler France's neo-imperialist ambitions and has created a unified army that conducts joint anti-jihadist operations.
In July 2025, Mali’s military-appointed legislative body granted Goita a five-year presidential mandate, renewable "as many times as necessary" without election.
Mali’s promise of democracy fades as junta extends Assimi Goita’s rule
With the military still in power, the situation for civilians is getting worse, according to Alioune Tine a former UN expert on human rights in Mali and the founder of the Senegalese think tank Afrikajom Center.
"They came for security, but today security is deteriorating," he told RFI. "Now, the most serious thing from my point of view is that the promises of an 18-month transition have not been kept," he explains.
Furthermore, the junta announced in May the dissolution of all political parties and organisations, as well as a ban on meetings.
"We are witnessing a kind of authoritarian rule, with increasingly restricted civic space, making it virtually impossible for the press, civil society or the opposition to express themselves," Tine says.
Destabilisation plot
On top of the ongoing security and economic issues, Malian authorities are searching for possible accomplices in what they say is a "foreign government-backed plot" to destabilise the country.
This follows the arrest of a French national suspected of working for French intelligence services along with over 50 Malian soldiers last week.
In a separate move, Mali's civilian former prime minister Choguel Maiga and a number of his former colleagues were taken into custody as part of an investigation into claims of "misappropriation of public funds".
UN mission in Mali officially ends after 10 years
Maiga, a former junta heavyweight, was appointed prime minister in 2021 before being dismissed at the end of last year after criticising the military government.
He had criticised being excluded from decisions about the continued leadership of the generals, who had initially promised to hand power back to elected civilians in March 2024.
No connection has been made between his arrest and those of the soldiers accused of wanting to overthrow the government.
