A month after becoming president of Mali in 2013, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita declared that the days of mutinous soldiers undermining the power of government in the capital Bamako were over. “Kati will no longer scare Bamako,” he said, referring to the Kati military base outside the capital where a mutiny the previous year had toppled then-President Amadou Toumani Toure. Seven years later, Keita, 75, has suffered a similar fate. He was overthrown on Tuesday by a military coup that began with a mutiny in Kati. Within hours, the putschists, firing shots in the air, drove into town, detained Keita, took him to Kati and forced him to resign and dissolve parliament. Despite lofty promises to root out the problems that led to his predecessor’s demise – a security crisis caused by insurgents in the north and public perceptions of high-level corruption – those same factors proved Keita’s undoing. Disputed legislative elections in April and an anaemic economy further fuelled public anger, drawing tens of thousands of people on to the streets of Bamako in recent weeks to demand his resignation. Keita, widely known by his initials IBK, won re-election two years ago and his ruling coalition enjoyed a healthy majority in parliament. But that masked the depth of popular dissatisfaction, said Ibrahim Maiga, a Mali-based researcher at the Institute for Security Studies. “He wasn’t able to understand quickly enough the anger that cut across the entire society,” said Maiga. “He didn’t fully appreciate the strong demand for change in the country.” Keita came to office with a reputation for firmness forged as a prime minister in the 1990s when he took a hard line with striking trade unions. But from the start he was unable to get a handle on the security crisis in northern Mali. French forces had intervened in January 2013 to drive back al Qaeda-linked jihadists who had hijacked an ethnic Tuareg rebellion to seize the northern two-thirds of the country. Keita’s government struggled to assert control over Tuareg militias that continued to push for autonomy. The jihadists regrouped, inflicting heavy losses on Malian soldiers and civilians while extending their presence into central Mali and neighbouring countries. Attacks by the jihadists – some with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State – stoked tit-for-tat clashes between rival herding and farming communities that have eclipsed the violence by militants, claiming hundreds of lives this year alone.