Their Africa

When is a coup d’etat, not a coup? When it overthrows a hidden historical coup? The Alliance of Sahelian States, or Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), emerged, in July 2024, as a political union of three states, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. These countries share the historically legacy of having been colonized and subsequently controlled economically by France, through a Paris-driven policy known as francafrique. The AES concretized its formation following the threat by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to intervene military to reverse the coup that transpired in Niger in 2023. Mali endured a coup in 2021, and Burkina Faso succumbed to military rule in 2022. The three countries are all controlled by military rulers, who are united in the commitment to defend each other in the face of internal and external threats, notably the “neo-colonialism” which they argue is manifest in the behavior of ECOWAS, and in the “hidden” historical coup perpetrated by France as their former colonial power, through its policy of francafrique. The coup leaders in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger have a project to remove French military forces from their territories and liberate their economies from French companies.

Following the 1885 European Scramble for Africa, the French colonized a significant proportion of the African continent and by 1960 it controlled more than five million square kilometers in West Africa and Central Africa, which was more than ten times the size of France (1). Despite securing “independence” from France, it immediately became clear that this was independence in form rather than real independence with substance. France maintained a Gordian knot with its former colonies by binding them into a monetary system that they did not control. More specifically, Paris established the Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) which required post-colonial African countries to deposit at least half of their foreign currency reserves with the Banque de France. It is significant that “France was one of the first countries to be defeated by Hitler, however even while under German occupation, it retained its colonies” (2). Subsequently, “after World War II, under Charles De Gaulle, France refused to grant genuine independence to its African colonies…today those ambiguous policies are coming back to haunt it” (3). This francafrique policy of control morphed but essentially remained intact, based on the views of Albert Sarraut, the Colonial Minister of France from 1920-24, when he states that as far as the imperial economy is concerned, “a colonial possession means to the home country simply a privileged market when it will draw the raw materials it needs, dumping its own manufactured goods in return” (4).

As the Senegalese novelist, Boubacar Diop, notes francafrique is based on “the continuing subjugation of supposedly sovereign African states” (5) because French losses in Algeria and Indochina convinced the Paris “that it was wiser to grant nominal independence to its colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa while keeping a tight rein on them … gradually, the French empire switched from brutal overseer to absentee landlord” (6). Diop further notes that initially any prospective African heads of state was informally interviewed by General de Gaulle, and his adviser on Africa, Jacques Foccart, off-the-record with the expectation, that if “elected”, he would “put the resources of his country at France’s disposal and routinely vote alongside the latter at the UN” (7). By instrumentalizing and operationalizing francafrique, Paris has defined “African foreign policy as the ‘domaine résérvé au Président de la République’ which means ‘the domain reserved to the French President” (8). This “is how France has maintained, since the sixties up to the present day, its status as a world power wielding a modicum of clout” (9). In return, the benefits to the “puppet” head of state are that he can imprison his political opponents, embezzle national funds “all without fearing the slightest rebuke” and that this “well-oiled engine runs only through back channels and shady networks” and so there is no evidence to expose this to the unsuspecting citizens (10). In addition, Paris has not hesitated to intervene militarily to reverse an attempt to disrupt its control of its political puppets in Africa and undermine dominance in the francafrique territory. The spectre of francafrique has continued to haunt the West and Central African regions. It is estimated that, since the 1990’s, about 78 percent of the military coups that have taken place in Africa have been in former French colonies, which ints at a not-so-hidden agenda of deposing leaders who do not align with the interest in Paris (11). Since the era of artificial decolonization, France has intervened more than 50 times in Africa, specifically in the francafrique region. These are the historical francafrique “coups” that the military rulers of the Alliance of Sahelian States claim to be attempting to reverse (12).

The legacy of Francafrique has led to an unstable political, security and economic landscape in the Sahel. For example, Niger has descended into becoming a transit country for the tragic trend of the human trafficking of migrants who are making their way to Libya and on to Europe. Niger possesses some of the largest deposits of uranium, gold, coal and a range of other minerals vital to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (13). In 2010, it is estimated that Niger exported Euro 3.5 billion Euros worth of uranium to France and only received back 459 million Euros, apparently due to the costs of extraction (14). In addition, the French company Orano (rebranded from Areva) has secured a contract to continue mining uranium from Niger until 2040 (15). According to the UN Development Programme Human Development Index, Niger is the among the three least developed countries in the world. In particular, approximately 90% of households in Niger do not have regular and working electricity access, which is a perverse paradox when one considers that its uranium is light up the homes in France and Europe (16).

Since 2014, the illicit extraction of gold from norther Niger has drawn in a range of smugglers from neighbouring states (17) including Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan, which intersects with narcotic trafficking routes coordinated by transnational organized criminal elements have continued to perpetuate the illegal extraction of narcotics and other resources from the country that would have otherwise have been utilized to provide healthcare, education, housing and building infrastructure for small and medium-sized enterprises to grow in the country (18).

Despite having be apparently “democratically elected” in 2021 the alleged authoritarian tendencies in President Bazoum became insurmountable for the people of Niger. Despite the external manifestations of a democratic society, the Economist Intelligence Unit, in its 2022 Democracy Index, descried Niger as an authoritarian regime. In March 2022, an Afrobarometer perceptions survey conducted in Niger revealed that more than half of the Nigeriens interviewed said they were dissatisfied with their democracy. On 26 July 2023, the military executed a coup d’état in Niger deposing the incumbent President Mohamed Bazoum and placing him under house arrest. The ECOWAS which at the time was led by the President of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, demanded that the coup leaders restore Bazoum to his presidency on threat of facing an intervention from the regional body (19).

In an unexpected turn of events, the military authorities in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea pledged to support the military regime in Niamey against an ECOWAS intervention, which subsequently led to the establishment of the Alliance of Sahelian States. The case of Niger remains a case of the ghosts of francafrique coming back to haunt the present.

France and the European Union are key importers of Niger’s uranium. As noted earlier in this report, the US conglomerate Chevron is in the process of building a 13 billion US dollar Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline which will deliver the product directly to European homes, whilst the people of Niger languish with inadequate utility services, housing, healthcare and education (20). This extraction was operationalized during Bazoum’s rule and it is evident that his transactional deals were not benefiting his people but the major geopolitical actors in the Global North. As part of Africa repositioning itself in the evolving global order it will be necessary for the African Union and member states to guard against such excesses which are facilitated by authoritarian rule and to push back against efforts by the Global North to continue treat the African continent as an extraction zone for its own selfish benefit and interests.

In 2011, the US-led NATO bombardment of Libya led to the fragmentation of the state fueled by radical extremist forces has since catalyzed instability across the Sahel and perpetuated the escalation of violent extremism across the Lake Chad region. Following NATO’s war against Libya the Sahel region descended into chaos with widespread illicit trade in small arms among multiple militia groups, which included piracy, smuggling of natural resources and human trafficking. The French so-called counter-terrorism operation in Mali, which was launched in 2013, and known as Operation Barkhane, officially conclude in August 2022, when all of its forces withdrew from the country.

Throughout 2022, Mali continued to endure the attacks by JNIM on military bases and against the Malian Armed Forces (FAM) across the country. Despite the efforts of Operation Barkhane as well as the ineffective interventions by the United National Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), the security situation in the country worsened, which suggests that a different approach is required to promote peace and stabilize the situation in the Sahel region. In effect, after nine years Operation Barkhane, which consumed vast expenses in terms of military personnel and logistics, left a chaotic legacy of militarization of the country and region, in effect fueling the loss of sovereign authority across vast swathes of land, and served as a magnet for the heightened radicalization of violent extremists.

There may be even more demands in the francafrique zone driven by a demand to end the control which Paris has imposed over its former African colonies. It is necessary for African citizens to confront the history and legacy of francafrique, to surface all of the harm that it has perpetrated in the region. The insecurity across the Sahel points to the need for a shift away from the tried and tested processes which are failing to ensure that the people of the region reclaim their sovereignty and the right to govern themselves and their resources for the benefit of their societies. This requires a peace-informed governance approach that solicits the views of the local communities across the Sahel on their nature of governance that they would want to establish in a manner that looks after their livelihood, health and education needs. In order to achieve this, the real and persistent effects of francafrique needs to be expunged from the region, which would require a radical shift in policy from Paris and a posture predicated on a much more humble and accommodating approach to engagement in the Sahel based on mutual interests and in the spirit of reciprocal respect for the sovereignty of the people. This would require the transformation of mindsets within Quai d’Orsay which continues to operate as if France was an imperial power rather than a middle power in what is now a significantly transformed global political economy. In practical terms, this requires a refocus on the mobilization of local and communal actors to drive their own peacebuilding and governance agendas at the societal level, rather than maintaining the top-down state-centric approach to government, buttressed by over-sized peacekeeping and peace enforcement inter-governmental missions, which has singularly failed to promote peace and stability in the Sahel region.

1 Tricontinental Institute, ‘No Military Intervention in Niger’, Red Alert, No. 17, 2023, p.1.
2 Donovan Williams, ‘Not an Arab Spring but a French Winter?’, Mail & Guardian, 18 to 24 August 2023, p.29.
3 Williams, ‘Not an Arab Spring but a French Winter?’, p.29.
4 Hippolyte Fofack, ‘Macron and the Future of Francafrique’, Project Syndicate, 9 June 2023, p.3.
5 Boubacar Diop, ‘Francafrique: A Brief History of a Scandalous Word’, New African, 23 March 2018, p.2.
6 Diop, ‘Francafrique: A Brief History of a Scandalous Word’.
7 Diop, ‘Francafrique: A Brief History of a Scandalous Word’.
8 Murat Yigit, ‘Shaking Francafrique off the Shoulders of Africa’, Anadolou Agency, 12 July 2022, p.2.
9 Murat Yigit, ‘Shaking Francafrique off the Shoulders of Africa’, Anadolou Agency, 12 July 2022.
10 Diop, ‘Francafrique: A Brief History of a Scandalous Word’.
11 Diop, ‘Francafrique: A Brief History of a Scandalous Word’.
12 Murat Yigit, ‘Shaking Francafrique off the Shoulders of Africa’, Anadolou Agency, 12 July 2022.
13 Alice Fereday, ‘Niger: Routes Shift Amid Post-Covid increase in Human Smuggling’, Global Initiative on Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), June 2022, p.2.
14 Martina Schwikowski, ‘Are Niger’s Uranium Supplies to France Under Scrutiny?’, available at:
https://www.dw.com/en/are-nigers-uranium-supplies-to-france-under-scrutiny/a-66711717, accessed on 29 September 2023, p.1.
15 Schwikowski, ‘Are Niger’s Uranium Supplies to France Under Scrutiny?’, p.1.
16 UN Development Programme, Specific Country Data – Niger, 2022, available at: https://hdr.undp.org/data-
center/specific-country-data#/countries/NER accessed 15 August 2023.
17 Alice Fereday, Niger: Routes Shift Amid Post-Covid Increase in Human Smuggling, Global Initiative Against Transitional Organized Crime, June 2022, p.8.
18 Ibrahim Diallo, Agadez: 12 Kilos d’or emportés après un braquage ce matin au centre ville, Air Info, 8 October 2022, available at: https://airinfoagadez.com/2022/10/08/, accessed 15 August 2023.
19 Mail & Guardian, ‘Nigeria Turns Screw on Niger Coup’, 4 to 10 August 2023, p.16.
20 Mondafrique, ‘L’attaque d’un groupe rebelle dans le nord du Niger’, 18 June 2022, available at: https://mondafrique.com/lattaque-dun-groupe-politico-militaire-dans-le-nord-niger/, accessed 15 August 2023.