Nuttiest African republic and their leaders

01

Jean-Bédel Bokassa

Bokassa fed political prisoners to his private crocodiles and lions, then had himself crowned emperor in a ceremony copying Napoleon's — in a country where per-capita income was under $400 a year.

02

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

Teodoro Obiang seized power in 1979 by having his uncle Francisco Macías Nguema shot on a football pitch, then ruled Equatorial Guinea for over 40 years while amassing a personal fortune from oil.

03

Francisco Macías Nguema

Francisco Macías Nguema killed or exiled roughly one-third of Equatorial Guinea's 300,000 citizens, banned the word 'intellectual,' and had the country's last lubricating oil poured into the ocean to prevent escape by boat.

04

Samuel Doe

Master Sergeant Samuel Doe — ninth-grade dropout — overthrew Liberia's government in 1980, then had 13 cabinet ministers stripped, tied to telephone poles on a Monrovia beach, and shot before a crowd.

05

Coronation of Bokassa I and Catherine

Bokassa's 1977 coronation cost $22 million — roughly one-third of the Central African Republic's annual GDP — including a diamond-encrusted crown, 6,000 bottles of Moët, and a throne shaped like a golden eagle.

06

Diamonds Affair

Bokassa gifted French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing diamonds worth an estimated $250,000; when the gift leaked in 1979, it toppled Giscard's presidency and reframed France's entire relationship with its African client states.

07

Mengistu Haile Mariam

Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam ran Ethiopia's Red Terror from 1977 to 1978, killing between 30,000 and 750,000 citizens; families of the executed were billed for the bullets used in the executions.

08

Idi Amin

Idi Amin awarded himself the Conqueror of the British Empire medal, the Victoria Cross, and a 'Last King of Scotland' title — all self-issued — while between 100,000 and 500,000 Ugandans died under his rule.

09

Siad Barre

Siad Barre fled Mogadishu in a tank in January 1991, leaving behind a capital he had shelled into ruins; the artillery campaign against his own city killed thousands and destroyed Somalia's central state for a generation.

10

Robert Mugabe

Mugabe's hyperinflation peaked in November 2008 at 89.7 sextillion percent monthly; Zimbabwe issued a $100 trillion banknote that could not buy a bus ticket, while life expectancy fell to 37 — the world's lowest.