Mali, 2021 — military coup
Event Summary
On 24 May 2021 Mali's military carried out a second coup in nine months, this time against the transitional government it had itself installed after the August 2020 coup. The transition, led by interim President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane with Colonel Assimi Goita, leader of the 2020 coup, as vice president, had been an uneasy arrangement under ECOWAS pressure to return Mali to civilian rule. The break came when Ndaw and Ouane announced a cabinet reshuffle that removed two military officers who had been key to the 2020 coup, from the defense and security ministries, without consulting Goita.
That afternoon soldiers arrested Ndaw and Ouane and took them to the Kati military base outside Bamako, the same garrison at the heart of every recent coup. Two days later they resigned. On 25 May Goita announced on state television that he had stripped the president and prime minister of their powers for trying to sabotage the transition and forming a government without consulting him, and he took over as transitional president.
He pledged that elections would still be held in 2022. The move was condemned by ECOWAS, the African Union, and international partners, and deepened Mali's isolation, but Goita consolidated control. Ndaw and Ouane were released from house arrest later in 2021.
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
- Detention or expulsion of the incumbent leader
- Mass arrests of officials, officers, or opponents
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
43205242021- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-432-2021-05-21
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Transitional President Bah Ndaw and PM Moctar Ouane, detained by the junta and forced out; released later; Goita took over.
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; arrested or jailed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Associated Press
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 →