Alpha Condé, the president of Guinea, is ousted in a coup

THE FIRST sign was gunfire on the streets of Conakry, Guinea’s capital, on the morning of September 5th. Soon after, unauthenticated videos spread on social media showing President Alpha Condé, looking stunned and dishevelled, surrounded by masked soldiers. “Have we touched a single hair on your head?” demands one soldier of the 83-year-old. Before the day was out, soldiers draped in Guinean flags appeared on television. “The personalisation of political life is over. We will no longer entrust politics to one man, we will entrust it to the people,” said Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya (pictured, waving), the head of Guinea’s special forces and leader of the coup, as he declared the constitution and government dissolved. “Look at the state of our roads, of our hospitals,” he said. “It’s time for us to wake up.”Mr Condé’s overthrow marks a sorry finale to a presidency that once promised much but has long disappointed. It is a dangerous moment for this suffering country of 13m people. The coup is also the latest lurch in an accelerating decline of democracy across much of Africa. The trend has raised fears of a return to the bad old days of plentiful putsches, especially in the west of the continent.