2013 — Mali Votes Again

On July 28, 2013, Mali went to the polls to choose a new president. The election came just a year after a 2012 military coup and an Islamist insurgency had torn the country's north apart, though French and Malian troops had driven the jihadists out months before voting began that summer.

Some five million Malians were eligible to vote, with twenty-seven candidates on the ballot. Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta won, taking nearly 78 percent in the runoff. It was Mali's first real step back to democracy, though the fragile peace would not last, and the country would fall to coups again within a decade.