Barely a year after revolutionary crowds and sections of the Burkina Faso military deposed long-ruling strongman Blaise Compaore, the men in uniform are back.

By Thursday, it looked like a coup led by the powerful presidential guard against the mixed civilian-military interim administration had succeeded.

It’s interesting, what is going on. In Burundi in May, there was a failed coup attempt, provoked by what critics call President Pierre Nkurunziza’s illegal third term grab.

And in South Sudan, when the country erupted into madness after barely two years of Independence in December 2013, President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of attempting to stage a coup.

South Sudan, Burundi and Burkina Faso in their different ways however offer us faint clues on how to predict — and therefore manage — the modern coup risk in Africa.

First, it is a vicious circle. Countries with a history of coups and armed rebellion are more likely to have coups and rebellions in future.

So Tanzania and Kenya, for example, don’t have to worry too much about coups. Ethiopia, South Sudan, Burundi, Uganda and Rwanda, should — unless they have mitigated it.

Generally, it would seem, whether an African government/leader came to power through a traditional coup, or an armed struggle like President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, the most dangerous period is the first 10 years.

As it moves towards 10 years, it becomes more secure and less likely to be overthrown, because the fact that it survives proves that the leaders are skilled at consolidating power.

Looking beyond 10 years, the picture is uncertain, but Ghana, Mozambique, and even Nigeria give us pointers. It is the nature of civilian transition.

It would seem countries entrench constitutional politics, if the transition leaders are civilians, not rebel generals or coup makers trading in their camouflage for business suits.

Thus after Jerry Rawlings in Ghana, we are now into the country’s third conventional civilian president. You need many transitions of civilians to reduce the risk of coups in once coup-prone nations.

On the face of it, this does not seem to make sense, but on deeper reflection it does. It all has to do with how civilians and former generals and guerrilla leaders buy support from the military.

Most civilian leaders tend to bribe the army as an institution with goodies, to keep them happy.

Former generals and guerrilla leaders, however, tend to feed the best steak to their old power factions in the military — which apparently is what Kiir and Nkurunziza have done.

It is an understandable bias, but very dangerous. We can conclude from this that any post-coup or rebellion country in Africa that hasn’t had a change of leadership of at least two civilian leaders is at risk of a coup in the years to come, no matter how stable it may be today.

Even a change of leaders within the same ruling party is good enough. Power does not need to shift to another party for countries to reap what we could call the “transition dividend.”

Charles Onyango-Obbo is editor of Mail & Guardian Africa (mgafrica.com). Twitter@cobbo3