Burkina Faso, 2022 — military coup
Event Summary
On 30 September 2022 Captain Ibrahim Traore led a group of officers to overthrow Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the man who had himself seized power in Burkina Faso just eight months earlier, in the country's second coup of the year. Damiba had justified his January coup by promising to turn the tide against the jihadist insurgency, but violence only worsened during his brief rule, with armed groups tightening blockades on towns and a deadly ambush on a supply convoy near Gaskinde shortly before his fall. Traore, a 34-year-old artillery officer who had taken part in the January coup, and fellow junior officers moved against Damiba on 30 September after clashes at the presidential palace and the military headquarters in Ouagadougou, dissolving the transitional government and legislature and suspending the constitution.
This was not a break with the ruling junta but a takeover from within it: the same Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration remained in place under new leadership. After mediation by religious and community leaders, Damiba agreed on 2 October to resign, on conditions including guarantees for his safety, and went into exile in Togo. Traore was named head of state.
The period saw anti-French and pro-Russian sentiment on the streets, with some supporters waving Russian flags.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Military
- How long it took
- 2 days from first move to resolution
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
43909302022
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Interim President Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, ousted by junior officers and forced to resign; he fled into exile in Togo.
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; exiled. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Wikipedia
The New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →