Even by the standards of analysts who have been watching Africa for decades, numbed by coups, conflict, corruption, brutal repression of populations, and mass poverty and hunger, the continent is looking at a rough year. “A rough year?  Yes, given what we saw in 2021, and given the economic fallout from the (COVID-19) pandemic that’s getting worse by the day, leaving millions of people poor and desperate,” Dr. Remi Adekoya, who teaches politics at York University in the United Kingdom, told The Epoch Times. The year 2021 saw four power seizures succeed in Africa—Chad, Guinea, Mali, Sudan—the highest in more than 40 years. The new year has already seen its first coup, with the military in Burkina Faso seizing power on Jan. 24 from President Roch Kabore, apparently after its demands for more resources to fight Islamist extremists were ignored. There have now been 96 coups on the continent since …