- Mali -

President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita is overthrown in August in a putsch after several months of street protests and political crisis in the West African nation.

The takeover was condemned by the international community. But sanctions were lifted on October 5 after a transition government was formed by former air force officer and politician Bah Ndaw, who promised to hand over power within 18 months.

The August 18 coup was the second in just over eight years in the Sahel troublespot.

In 2012 mutinous soldiers led by Captain Amadou Sanogo overthrew and arrested president Amadou Toumani Toure, leading to the fall of the north of the country to Islamist rebels allied with Al-Qaeda.

- Sudan -

Dictator Omar al-Bashir's 30 years in power is ended by the army in April 2019 after a four-month street revolt sparked by the price of bread tripling.

More than 250 people die in the protests, according to opposition groups. A transition council of military and civil society leaders is formed in August 2019 and a civilian prime minister appointed the following month.

- Zimbabwe -

Robert Mugabe, who had led the country with an iron fist for the 37 years since independence, finally falls in 2017.

He is ousted by the military and members of his own ZANU-PF party, who replace him with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Mugabe dies in Singapore two years later, aged 95.

- Burkina Faso -

Less than a year after the fall of president Blaise Compaore after a popular revolt, Michel Kafando is overthrown as president in a coup led by his own presidential guard in 2015.

But less than a week later Kafando is back in power after the coup leaders fail to gather support.

- Thailand -

The army seizes power in 2014 after months of demonstrations against the elected government of Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, himself driven out by a coup in 2006.

- Egypt -

The military ousts Egypt's first democratically-elected leader, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi, in 2013 after huge demonstrations against his one year in charge.

The general who led the bloody putsch, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, becomes president and begins a brutal crackdown on dissent that is still going on.

- Guinea Bissau -

Troops led by General Antonio Indjai oust interim president Raimundo Pereira and former prime minister Carlos Gomes Junior between two rounds of a presidential poll in 2012.

It is the second coup in the former Portuguese colony in three years.

Pereira had become leader only after president Joao Bernardo Vieira was assassinated by the military a few hours after his army chief of staff was also shot.

- Niger -

President Mamadou Tandja is overthrown in a military coup in 2010, months after dissolving parliament in a bid to hold onto power. The desert nation in Africa's Sahel is going to the polls at the end of this month to replace Mahamadou Issoufou, who took over from Tandja.