Under the soft glare of stage lights in Accra, John Atta Mills looked out at the crowd that had gathered for his final public address. His posture was rigid, his words measured. Three days later, he was dead. The official cause was throat cancer. The unofficial whispers pointed in every direction. He had begun distancing Ghana from certain Western economic frameworks. He had invited China in. He had, according to some, made himself a problem. No evidence was ever released to support a conspiracy. No investigation followed the rumors. The flags were lowered, the tributes flowed, and another African president disappeared into the archives with a closed file and an open question.
To lead an African nation is to walk into history with your back exposed. The seat of power is rarely a throne. It is a crucible. From Thomas Sankara’s bloodied uniform in Ouagadougou to Patrice Lumumba’s severed body in Katanga, the job of president is often a slow collapse that begins with a ballot and ends with a bullet or an exile. The rise may be democratic, but the fall is nearly always decisive and brutal. For every celebration of leadership, there is a funeral to match it.
In Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré watched his predecessor fall to assassins before ascending the same office. Decades later, it was his turn to flee. He boarded a helicopter and escaped the country hours before the military took over. His decades in power had been marred by accusations of repression, cronyism, and betrayal. Yet the moment he stepped outside the presidency, the protections vanished. He became a fugitive. He remains in exile.
The pattern repeats across the continent. Leaders are praised as liberators, then condemned as autocrats. Those who survive rarely do so cleanly. Paul Biya has ruled Cameroon since 1982. Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea since 1979. Both have outlasted generations of critics, but their tenures rest not on consensus but on containment. The longer they stay, the more fortified they must become. The presidency ceases to be a public office and becomes a bunker.
In Africa, the president is rarely just a politician. He is a gatekeeper between competing foreign powers, often with irreconcilable agendas. France wants influence. The United States wants stability. China wants infrastructure contracts. Russia wants access. Each move the president makes is watched. Each alliance carries consequences. Those who resist become symbols. Thomas Sankara rejected IMF loans and French control. He lasted four years. Muammar Gaddafi rejected Western military basing and oil dependencies. He lasted decades, but not forever.
When Western interests are threatened, the outcomes follow a quiet but familiar script. Sankara was killed in a coup that brought in a Western-friendly government. Gaddafi was executed on the side of a road after a NATO-backed uprising. Lumumba was handed to his enemies with Belgian and CIA involvement and died tortured, mutilated, and dissolved in acid. These are not secrets. The documents have been declassified. The memos exist. What remains hidden is the full scope of the machinery that makes political survival in Africa such a dangerous proposition.
Even when assassination is not the outcome, the pressure is unrelenting. In Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari entered office with promises to fight corruption. What he faced instead was a labyrinth of entrenched networks. Every appointment was political. Every reform threatened someone’s fortune. He outlasted his critics, but his health declined. In 2017, he spent months receiving treatment in London while speculations of his death surged across the country. He returned, physically present but visibly aged. Power had taken its toll.
Corruption is not merely a temptation in these systems. It is a condition of survival. To resist it entirely is to risk removal. To engage in it too openly is to risk revolt. The balance is impossible to maintain. Jacob Zuma in South Africa fell under the weight of state capture allegations. Omar al-Bashir in Sudan clung to power through a mix of bribes, suppression, and international defiance, only to be overthrown by his own military. In both cases, the presidency became a liability not just to the people, but to the very structures that once protected it.
Coup attempts remain a constant feature. Since 2020 alone, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Gabon have all experienced military takeovers. In many of these cases, the justifications cited corruption, poor governance, or Western interference. But behind the press statements, the reality is more complex. Soldiers act not only out of patriotism, but calculation. Taking the presidency is often an act of desperation as much as ambition. But once in office, the same pressures return. The cycle begins again.
Ibrahim Traoré was 34 when he became the leader of Burkina Faso in a military coup. He spoke of sovereignty and dignity. He expelled French troops and signaled a shift toward Russia. Supporters saw him as a nationalist. Detractors saw a return to Cold War-style alignments. In either view, the same question remained: how long could he last before becoming the next target?
African presidencies are not defined by policies but by survival. They are measured not in legislation but in funerals, trials, and exiles. There is no post-presidency speaking circuit, no library, no memoir tour. For many former leaders, the retirement plan is asylum or imprisonment. Laurent Gbagbo spent years at the International Criminal Court before being acquitted. Hissène Habré of Chad was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to life. Charles Taylor of Liberia remains incarcerated in the United Kingdom. Each name once carried presidential weight. Now they carry prison numbers.
Yet despite all of this, the office continues to attract aspirants. Campaigns swell with energy. Ballots are cast with hope. The people vote not because they forget, but because they remember what has come before and still believe in what might come next. But the office itself does not change. It consumes. It isolates. It places the individual in a space where every handshake could be a trap and every reform a provocation.
Even in nations with relative stability, the strain is visible. Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya navigated internal divides, economic demands, and external pressures from both the East and West. He finished his term without scandal, but his time in office was not peaceful. Surveillance increased. Protests erupted. His allies shifted. His legacy remains contested. The job did not destroy him, but it did not leave him untouched.
To be president in Africa is to inherit the aftermath of colonial borders, economic dependency, and international interference. It is to lead with one eye on the people and the other on the powers watching from afar. It is to be held accountable for crises you did not create and blamed for outcomes you could not prevent. It is to stand on a stage, like John Atta Mills, and wonder what part of your body will break next.
The worst job in Africa is not in the fields or the mines or the factories. It is in the palace. It is in the capital. It is surrounded by aides, guarded by soldiers, envied by millions, and quietly haunted by the ghosts of those who came before. The power is real, but it is never truly yours. The spotlight is constant, but it only shows you what you cannot see until it is too late.
