Meet The Victors In Africa’s Coup Belt – Militaristic, Nationalistic And Keen To Cut A Deal

The West’s relations with countries in the Sahel seemed to have hit rock bottom in May when Niger ordered America to withdraw its forces by September—having already booted out a French counter-terrorism mission—and welcomed Russian military advisers. Then even this bottom fell out. Last month Niger, which supplies about a quarter of Europe’s uranium, revoked the mining licence of France’s state-owned nuclear fuel company. Many fear the country will now hand over the rights to one of the world’s biggest uranium mines to a Russian state-owned firm.

Niger’s turn against the West comes amid what many in French-speaking west Africa are calling a second “independence”. It is being spurred by a new generation of nationalists who have taken power in former French colonies from Senegal to Chad and the three core countries of the Sahel: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. They have done so amid strident appeals to sovereignty and autonomy, in language reminiscent of Ahmed Sekou Touré, the first president of independent Guinea, who told Charles de Gaulle in 1958: “Guinea prefers poverty in liberty to riches in slavery”. Several have strengthened ties with Russia. All want a new relationship with the West. “‘Sovereignty’ is the big word in the region these days,” says Ibrahim Yahaya of Crisis Group, a think-tank. “It has become almost like a religious dogma.”

Most prominent among the new nationalists are military leaders from the Sahel trio, where Western forces had been battling jihadists. The wider group includes Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s president, and Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, Guinea’s leader since a coup in 2021. “The era of the old Africa is over,” Mr Doumbouya told the UN in New York last year. “This is the end of an unbalanced and unjust era where we had no say. It is time to take our proper place.”

The new nationalists portray themselves as the modern embodiments of the anti-colonial struggle. Mr Doumbouya has set about rehabilitating the divisive memory of Sekou Touré, for instance by renaming Conakry’s airport after him. Burkina Faso’s 36-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who grabbed the presidency in a putsch in 2022, styles himself as the reincarnation of Thomas Sankara, a socialist leader who was assassinated in 1987.

Demands for greater sovereignty partly reflect security concerns. Instability continues to spread across the Sahel more than a decade after France dispatched troops to Mali to put down an Islamist insurgency. With a record 11,643 fatalities linked to jihadist violence in 2023, the Sahel is now the global centre for terror attacks. Beginning in Mali in 2020, and followed by Burkina Faso and Niger, the Western-trained local soldiers who have seized power have blamed French troops—who numbered more than 5,000 in the region at their peak four years ago—for failing to crush the insurgents. Aggrieved local populations appear to agree.

Since 2022 French troops have withdrawn or been expelled from almost the entire Sahel. The last holdout is Chad. But sentiment is changing there, too. Mahamat Idriss Déby is thought to be considering an end to an uninterrupted French military presence dating back to 1899. Senegal has suggested Paris recall its troops and Mali has expelled Danish and un peacekeepers. After a meeting with Vladimir Putin last year, Burkina Faso hired Russian mercenaries. Since then the targets of its “anti-colonial” invective have included America, the eu and nato, says a Western diplomat based there.

After army officers in Niger toppled their elected government last year, they kicked out French troops. Less than a year later the new junta told America to withdraw its forces and close its bases, which had been used to gather intelligence for counter-terrorism operations. Niger has followed Mali and Burkina Faso in signing a military co-operation agreement with Russia. (It has also cozied up to Iran, which may have eyes on Niger’s uranium.) It is not hard to see the appeal of Russia, whose mercenaries provide regime protection and have few scruples about human rights. Not wishing to be left out, Chad’s Mr Déby has threatened to expel American forces and replace them with Russian ones.

Another front is economic. For decades the market share of French businesses in west Africa has been in decline. But some of France’s biggest firms—telecoms giant Orange, for instance—remain highly visible. They have often become targets of popular anger. New mining codes in Mali and Burkina Faso have increased the state’s minimum shareholding. In Guinea, home to some of the world’s richest iron and bauxite reserves, the regime has revoked more than 100 foreign mining licences, most of them belonging to Chinese firms, and introduced “local content” requirements for contractors on mining projects. Most significantly it has renegotiated licences for a $20bn iron ore, rail and port development, pushing a consortium of Chinese state-owned firms into a joint venture with Rio Tinto, in a deal that guarantees a 15% stake for the state.

In Senegal Mr Faye has called for a “rupture” with the existing model of relations with the West and promises to pursue agricultural self-sufficiency. “If you can’t produce what you eat, you can’t say you are free,” says Abdourahim Kebe, an official in the ruling party. Mr Faye also plans to review oil and gas contracts with multinationals, which he claims are not in Senegal’s interests. “We won’t accept being a servant anymore,” Mr Kebe says.

A third front is cultural, with calls to shake off the allegedly neocolonial grip on languages and customs. Senegal’s ruling party is said to be mulling dropping French as its official language. Mr Faye’s allies talk of reducing French influence in education. In Burkina Faso the prime minister recently urged his fellow citizens to resist Western-imposed “cultural alienation”.

Many of west Africa’s nationalists admire Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s strongman, for his hard-nosed dealings with the West, economic nationalism and aversion to democracy. Babacar Ndiaye of wathi, a think-tank in Senegal, argues that his model appeals “because what is important for Kagame is what benefits Rwanda”.

Though they may evoke the late Sankara—who, whatever his faults, promoted the rights of women—the new generation are not social progressives. Senegal’s prime minister, Ousmane Sonko, used a recent press conference with the far-left French opposition leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, to criticise gay rights and gender equality.

Many leaders are clear-cut authoritarians. In May, Mali’s junta said it would seek to delay its “transition” to democracy. The military leadership in Burkina Faso followed suit two weeks later, declaring Mr Traoré eligible to contest elections in 2029. In Guinea, Mr Doumbouya once promised an end to the era of “personalised” power. He has repeatedly told foreign officials that he will leave office in 2025. But in Conakry his image is everywhere. “Doumbouya is the alpha and omega of the state,” says Sanso Barry, a journalist.

Repression is intensifying. Journalists have been locked up or forced into exile. In Guinea, dozens of protesters have been gunned down. Rights groups accuse Burkina Faso’s army of massacring civilians.

The new nationalists say they are pan-Africanists. Mr Faye has already renamed the foreign ministry the “Ministry of African Integration and Foreign Affairs” and toured regional capitals. “We want the pan-Africanist view to spread,” says Dame Mbodj, a trade union leader and close ally.

All are critical of ecowas, the regional bloc. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have left ecowas and formed the rival Alliance of Sahel States (known as aes), a defence pact and putative confederation. Chad is thought to want to join. But Guinea’s junta, which alone is strengthening ties with Western governments, wants nothing to do with it. Mr Doumbouya is a former French legionnaire married to a French woman, and though he leads a former Soviet ally, it enjoys friendly ties with France and America as well as Russian and China. “There is a lot to be gained by being the only holdout,” notes a Western diplomat. Though Mr Faye of Senegal sounds sympathetic to the aes, he wants its members to return to ecowas.

Some want to work with neighbours to establish a new common currency to replace the France-backed cfa franc. But the region is riven by trade spats and disputes over resources. Sanctions imposed by ecowas on Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger (since partially lifted) are one reason why “interstate tensions are growing to a degree we haven’t seen in the region for a long time,” says Crisis Group’s Mr Yahaya.

West Africa’s new nationalism is inchoate, sometimes contradictory, and vulnerable to authoritarian drift. But it would be a mistake to assume that its standard-bearers are unbending ideologues destined for Russia’s orbit. “As much as these leaders aim to assert their sovereignty, they are not looking to make enemies,” says Cameron Hudson of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington. Instead their approach to the outside world is to look for the best deal. Niger’s junta spent months trying to negotiate a new military agreement with America before it cut ties. Officials in Senegal and Guinea talk of striking “win-win” agreements with foreign governments and firms. Africa’s new nationalists are ruthless and transactional—and unmistakably the product of an increasingly multipolar world.

Source: The Economist: