Africa has seen a recent spate of military coups—from Mali to Guinea to Burkina Faso to Niger to Gabon. Most Western powers have condemned these coups. But many Africans have rejoiced, or at least have been far less concerned. For example, a survey conducted shortly after the coup in Niger suggests that most people in four other West African countries (Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast) believed that the Niger coup was justified. Why the dissonance between Western and African reactions to these coups?

The answer has to do with the dysfunction and corruption of many nominally “democratic” African governments. Endemic corruption has destroyed public trust in African democracy, and coup leaders have made it clear that corruption is one of the core justifications for their takeovers. Whether this is sincere, a pretext, or a combination, it is clear that the coup leaders are tapping into a sense of genuine public grievance, and that many citizens in these countries have become so frustrated with their elected governments that they would willingly trade electoral democracy for a government with the political will to fight corruption and improve living conditions.

For this reason, it would be an error to see African citizens’ support for these coups as evidence of a turn against genuine democracy. But there is an enormous gap between genuine democracy and the reality of electoral democracy as it exists in many African countries. Westerners who are surprised by African citizens’ support for the recent coups have underestimated just how poorly the corruption of the previous regimes had devastated public trust.

African citizens’ disillusionment with democracy springs from decades of broken promises, resource mismanagement, political powerlessness, economic exploitation, and self-aggrandizement by political elites. Despite being nominally democratic, many African governments do not behave as if they need the consent of their people. Corrupt government officials and their cronies have misappropriated the African countries’ vast resource wealth rather than reinvesting it into the country. Over $89 billion in illicit financial flows leave African countries every year. To take one of many possible dispiriting examples, since independence in 1960, Nigeria—where the executive branch wields unbridled power by bribing the legislative and judicial branches—has lost more than $582 billion to corruption.

In short, many of these formally “democratic” African governments are not genuinely democratic because they do not serve the interests of the people. Due to pervasive corruption and greed, these governments consistently fail to provide sufficient healthcare, security, jobs, electricity, affordable food and housing, free-flowing mobility, hard infrastructure, and education. And when citizens contest this through peaceful demonstrations, the elected government employs the security forces, or state-sponsored vigilante groups, to brutalize and even kill civilians, as demonstrated through the 2020 #ENDSARS protests in Nigeria. African civilians well understand that corruption is preventing them from benefiting from democracy’s promises. Hence, citizens have been primed to welcome structural and governmental change, even in the form of anti-democratic military coups.

What is so tragic about this is that most African citizens would prefer genuine democracy to military rule. Africans cheered for recent coups not because they have rejected democracy, but because they are hopeful that the coups will eventually lead to better democratic governance. Many Africans have welcomed military intervention—which the coup leaders promise will be temporary, and eventually will lead to a transition back to democracy—as a way to get to get their countries back on track.

To be clear, this optimism—that the military coups are the best way to eventually get a real democracy instead of a nominal democracy—may be misplaced. Military regimes are often deeply and pervasively corrupt, with little regard for accountability or rule of law. And promises that a military government will be temporary are often broken. My argument is most certainly not that these coups are, on balance, a good development. But it is important to understand why they have received so much support from Africans. The celebration of these military takeovers, though unnerving to many Western observers, should drive home the message that it’s a mistake to underestimate the threat that grand corruption poses to the democratic project. And, more specifically, while Western governments and NGOs may be right to call for the re-establishment of democracy, they should be careful not to focus on the reinstatement of the elected leaders ousted in these recent coups. Restoring these corrupt governments and their leaders will not resolve Africa’s democracy problem, much less Africa’s corruption problem.

A democracy that is riddled with stifling corruption is no democracy at all. The idea that grand corruption can be tolerated for the greater good of electoral governance does not hold for governments that intentionally manipulate the system—and, in turn, undermine the welfare of their citizens—for personal gain. The only way to preserve democracy in Africa is by giving people a fighting option to pursue it. It is therefore vital that we build African citizens’ capacity to design smart, civilian-led systems that are honest, competent, and deliver on their promises to their citizens. If we fail to do this, even nominally democratic African governments will be fragile and vulnerable to future coups.