Most Brutal Sub-Saharan African Dictators

Dictators or authoritarian leaders in African nations south of the Sahara Desert. Ranked by kill count, human rights violations, and actions that affected other nations.
The Top Ten
1 Idi Amin Idi Amin Dada was a Ugandan politician and military officer. He was the President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin was born either in Koboko or Kampala to a Kakwa father and Lugbara mother. In 1946 he joined the King's African Rifles of the British Colonial Army.
2 Mobutu Sese Seko
3 Francisco Macias Nguema
4 Robert Mugabe Robert Gabriel Mugabe (21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s.
5 P. W. Botha
6 Isaias Afwerki
7 Mengistu Haile Mariam Mengistu Haile Mariam is an Ethiopian politician who was the leader of Ethiopia from 1977 to 1991. He was the chairman of the Derg, the Communist military junta that governed Ethiopia, from 1977 to 1987, and the President of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1987 to 1991. Effectively a dictator, his rule is remembered for the following historical events: the end of the Solomonic dynasty, ending feudalism era, land redistribution, the Ethiopian Red Terror of 1977–1978, the Somalian-Ethiopian war of 1977-1978, and the 1984 famine.
8 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
9 Jean-Bédel Bokassa
10 Emmerson Mnangagwa
The Contenders
11 Hissene Habre
12 Sani Abacha
13 Omar al-Bashir Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir is a Sudanese politician who served as the seventh president of Sudan and head of the National Congress Party from 1989 to 2019, when he was deposed in a coup d'état. He was incarcerated, tried, and convicted of multiple corruption charges.
14 Hastings Banda
15 Jose Eduardo dos Santos
16 Sekou Toure
17 Paul Kagame
18 Pierre Nkurunziza
19 Samuel Doe
20 Paul Biya
21 Hussein Farrah Aidid
22 Laurent-Désiré Kabila
23 Obiang Mbasogo
24 Idriss Déby
25 Yahya Jammeh
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