Last week’s military takeover in Guinea-Bissau is the latest in a series of coups that has engulfed west Africa in recent years. Almost all have taken place in the Sahel, the semi-arid belt below the Sahara that bisects the continent.

The latest coup in Guinea-Bissau “doesn’t follow the regional script led by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger”, said Tomi Oladipo on Semafor . And each of the coups in west Africa has had “unique triggers”, said researcher Salah Ben Hammou on The Conversation . But neither are they isolated events: this is a “coup cascade” in the Sahel .

How did it begin?

When Libya ’s Gaddafi regime collapsed in 2011, an “abundance of weaponry” was looted and spread across the Sahel, said world news newsletter Proximities . Members of Mali’s Tuareg group who had fo

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