As we must all have already somehow discovered, last 26th July 2023 Niger’s presidential guard detained the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. It was a shock to the Nigerian people as well as to the international community watching the events in the country slowly unfold.
Just when we thought our world would not see any more sudden military interventions that would wreak havoc in the world, a coup d’état was led in the country’s presidential palace located in Niamey, Niger’s capital city. This is a country that had its rst peaceful democratic presidential election last 2020-2021 season, where president Bazoum was democratically elected by the people of Niger. After this event, and the fact that he managed to overcome an attempted coup, also performed by Nigerien military commanders, it seemed as though Niger might have been the rst ever country in the Sahel region that would have been able to retain its democracy and political integrity, setting itself apart from its two most prominent neighbours that succumbed to military coups, Burkina Faso and Mali. However, shortly thereafter, presidential guard commander Abdourahamane Tchiani proclaimed himself the leader of the new Nigerian military junta.
There are a myriad dierent reasons why this political instability in the region is so prominent these days, but the denite last straw that exacerbated the issue has been no other than the strong anti-French colonist sentiment spread throughout West Africa’s former French colonies.
The thing is, the root cause of these imminent insurgencies in West Africa is one that was formed many years ago, causing us to reminisce back to France’s former glory in the 19th and 20th centuries, where it became the second largest colonial power in the world, only behind the British Empire. It is hard to forget the many atrocities European colonial powers committed in the African continent, including the exploitation of natives to gain free labour, the degradation of Africa’s natural landscapes to mine valuable natural resources, and the inconceivable devastation caused to an entire continent populated by peoples of radically dierent ethnic groups as a consequence of the deep greed running through the veins of those in power.
It is a fact, not an opinion, that what happened to Africa as a result of colonialism was a vicious and cruel act that served mainly to fuel the pockets of a few rich individuals to make them more powerful and richer, regardless of the massive collateral damage caused as a result.
But in today’s politics, we like to say we have learned from our mistakes, and that colonialism is a thing of the past. This can’t be further from the truth.
Although some countries did end up ceding full independence to their colonies, there was one country that was set on retaining its power and inuence over the regions it once reigned supreme, France.
The French strategically made it so its former colonies would have to continue to use the French Franc as their national currencies. France went as far as to create the “Franc Zone”, which is often also referred to as
the “CFA Franc Zone”, which would be a special subdivision of the French Franc that would be used by the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique, aiming to provide a stable currency and nancial support to the countries who used the currency. France was operating under the seamless and good-willed pretence of aiding the countries it caused so much devastation to, yet there was a strategic reason behind the “help” after all. So, where’s the catch?
They would conduct developmental eorts in the continent in exchange for them deciding which leader every single country part of the CFA Franc Zone would get to have. Jeopardising political integrity and democracy in exchange for political stability was the price to be paid after all.
Except, stability did not prevail.
Having a series of countries in Western Africa that would use France’s national currency would secure its inuence and dominance in the region as Africa’s greatest friend and ally. And so, when insurgent movements from radical islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, ISGS (the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara) and JNIM (Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen) started taking place in Western Africa, France came to the rescue by providing military personnel and training to the governments of said countries.
Yet there was another issue here the French had not seen coming.
Africa is a country populated by hundreds if not thousands of dierent tribes and ethnic groups, and when the continent was divided into countries by the former colonial powers, those in power divided it without acknowledging the ties existing between these said tribes and groups.
This caused countries like Mali, for example, to have overbearingly large populations of one ethnic group when compared to the others. Hence, allowing the majority population to run the country as they saw t. This is why, when the 2012 Tuareg Rebellion organised by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, composed and funded by al-Qaeda and other such jihadist groups, went down in the north of the country, the largest ethnic group in Mali seized control over the aid given by the French to combat the radicals. In theory, there should be nothing wrong with this as the government should act in the interest of the people, right?
The fact is, they did, only they did so in the interest of a carefully selected portion of the population. Pretty much, only those who belonged to the majority and ruling ethnic group. This phenomenon is even more visible in Burkina Faso, where the Mossi ethnic group, the largest one in the country, used the military apparel received from France to massacre other minority ethnic groups in the country with whom they held a rivalry, such as the Fulani and the Peul, instead of using that apparel to combat islamist radicals. So yes, it could be said that France’s initially sneaky manoeuvre backred on them, and instead of making these countries’ people praise the French for the military and socioeconomic help they were giving, it generated a deep hatred toward them.
This, coupled with the fact that Mali and Burkina Faso’s people thought France was not doing enough to eectively combat jihadist groups, paved the arrival of a new key player in the region: Russia.
The most popular Russian state-funded private military company to date, the Wagner Group, currently controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, has seen itself gain a considerable amount of inuence in the Sahel region, since, as former French colonies cut ties with Paris, the capital of a regime that suppressed their rights for years and used their country purely to exploit its natural resources, Moscow is simply an old friend who has always supported their independence and sovereignty and who’s now back to help them combat terrorism in their area, slightly hypocritical, isn’t it?
What’s more is that Russia does not give second thoughts to leveraging France’s dark past to cast a bright light on itself when establishing political and diplomatic ties with West African governments such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and most recently, yes, you guessed it, Niger.
Those supporting the coup in said countries are now seen brandishing the Russian ag alongside their own, demonstrating their support toward a strong alliance with Wagner and Moscow, mainly due to them thinking that Russia has been more eective than France ever was at combating islamist insurgencies in the region. Evidence to prove this opinion is yet to appear.
No matter how obscure France’s intentions of retaining dominance in Africa ever were, the extent to which it could be said that this was all France’s fault though is highly questionable, as it was Burkina Faso and Mali’s governments themselves the ones who used the aid received from France to full their selsh wants and purposes. Should they be the ones put to blame for the region’s instability?
But what does Russia, a country located so far from Niger and West Africa, stand to gain from this intervention, and Wagner’s operations in the region?
The answer is intricately linked to the war Russia started waging in Ukraine: natural resources.
Niger’s territories are rich in uranium, coal, iron ore, tin, phosphates, gold and petroleum, among others, and so are the other countries in the Sahel region. Hence, there is Russia’s deal, plain as day. Russia oers to give these countries military protection and equipment and personnel to combat and get rid of islamist insurgencies and jihadist groups, and in exchange for this, Moscow gets to extract valuable resources such as gold in order to continue funding its war against Ukraine.
Now, is this really such a good deal as it seems for these African countries? For one, unlike colonial France, Russia is now oering an exchange for something they dearly want, and they are not forcing an entire nation to exploit its resources, these nations are willingly allowing Russia to do that for themselves. And secondly, they are getting military help that “seems” to be working at ghting back against jihadist groups. Two things France did not manage to secure.
One thing is clearly visible in this pile of political mess though, whereas the West is losing control and diplomatic ties in Africa, Russia is augmenting its scope of influence in the region to nance its war in Ukraine and get hold of the tonnes of natural resources present in Ukraine’s territories, regardless of the devastation and mass murder it is putting the Ukrainian people through, and, arguably, presenting itself as the greatest and only colonial power in the 21st century, the exact thing it supposedly so strongly opposes and is using to severe France’s ties with its former colonies to establish itself as their new ally and partner. The hypocritical hit of the century.
In a nutshell, strategic international shocks in the world of politics keep coming nonstop, and they just seem to be heating up the political arena even further. What France will do to demonstrate its support for Ukraine in these coming months and reassert its dominance in West Africa is yet to be seen. In the meantime, the world awaits patiently to see how the events unfold.
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