In the recent years Chad, Guinea, Mali and Sudan caught the international attention for which one of the following reasons common to all of them?
Answer & explanation
Answer: (d) Successful coups
All four countries saw armed forces seize power in 2020-21: Mali in 2020 and again in May 2021, Chad in April 2021, Guinea in September 2021 and Sudan in October 2021. The UN itself described these as a wave of takeovers across the Sahel and West Africa.
- ✓ (d) Military takeovers happened in Mali, Chad, Guinea and Sudan between 2020 and 2021. This is the one feature common to all four; the UN linked them together while reacting to another coup in Burkina Faso in January 2022.
- ✗ (a) None of these events was about a rare-earth discovery. The four countries are in the news for political instability, not for a shared mineral find.
- ✗ (b) No shared story of Chinese military bases links the four countries.
- ✗ (c) Desertification of the Sahel is a regional concern, but it does not apply to all four: Guinea is a humid Atlantic-coast country, far from the Sahara, and the option does not describe why they were in the news.
Remember · Mali (2020, 2021), Chad (2021), Guinea (2021), Sudan (2021) and later Burkina Faso (2022) all saw military seizures of power; the common thread is coups.
Sources
- UN News, Guterres calls on Burkina Faso coup leaders to 'lay down their arms' (Internet Archive copy) ↗ “a military coup was staged in Mali, and a wave of other coup attempts, and takeovers have occurred across West Africa and the Sahel, including the seizure of power in Chad, Sudan and Guinea.”
Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2023, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·