- Andrzej Krajewski
Neocolonisation of Africa?
"The interference of the Western world is the greatest challenge facing all African countries," said Arikana Chihombori-Quao on the Arise News channel on 31 August.
The former ambassador of the African Union in Washington, known for her dislike of Western European powers, expressed an opinion that is very common on the African Continent. According to it, it is Western Europe's history of colonisation that is at the root of the misery experienced by Africans in recent times.
These anti-Western sentiments are being exploited by two external actors - China and Russia. Each has its own way of doing this. For Beijing, the instrument of influence is economic power, while Moscow offers 'military services on demand'. Both forms are so effective that Africa is rapidly shedding its European, including French, heritage. The problem is that the succession is falling not so much to local nations as to new patrons.
A wave of coups is sweeping Africa. The spectre of trans-regional war looms in the background. And all this is shrouded in the aura of billions of dollars offered by Africa's untapped resources.
What does the struggle for Africa look like?
The new collapse of Powers
Three weeks before the statement quoted in the introduction, Chihombori-Quao commented on the wave of coups that had swept the Sahel region. Indeed, in the last two years, military men have seized power by force in: Sudan, Chad, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Guinea.
"What is happening now in Africa is a revolution similar to what we saw after the fall of the mighty Roman Empire, similar to what we saw after the fall of the mighty British Empire” Chihombori-Quao enthused at the time. Additionally, she stressed that the removal of the previous ruling elites in the Sahel was taking place because France was losing influence in the countries that were once its colonies.
Chihombori-Quao, a US-trained diplomat has made no secret over the years of her particular dislike for the French government. It was speculated that this was the reason she lost her post as ambassador to the African Union in Washington in 2019, as the politicians running the Sahel countries at the time preferred not to expose themselves to Paris.
Now the diplomat can be satisfied. Between the two interviews she gave to Arise News, another former French colony has seen a change of power. On the morning of 30 August, soldiers from Gabon's elite Republican Guard removed Presid ent Ali Bongo Ondimba from office, even though they were supposed to be protecting him. The ousted leader was accused of rigging the presidential election, the results of which had been announced hours earlier.
In office since 2009. Ali Bongo and his father, Omar Bongo, who previously ruled Gabon, have been presidents of this African country for a total of 56 years! Their success was largely due to the support they could always count on from France. The late Omar was able to reciprocate by funding the election campaigns of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, among others.
However, Ali Bongo did not prove to be as skilful politician as his father. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, did not even lift a finger to defend the deposed leader or the members of his family and close associates who were imprisoned with him.
This is not the first example of the Republic's weakening position in Africa that has sparked widespread debate in France.
The leader of a coalition of left-wing groups, Jean-Luc Melenchon, criticised the head of state for turning a blind eye for years to Ali Bongo and his relatives stealing from Gabon and rigging successive elections with impunity. It is no coincidence that the senior member of the dynasty, Omar Bongo Ondimba, coined a popular saying: "In Africa, you don't hold elections to lose them".
On the other hand, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right, accused Macron of allowing France to completely lose its influence in a key region in just a few years. Interestingly, former Socialist president François Hollande also complained in a France Info programme that, despite the fact that this was yet another coup in a part of Africa that is considered to be part of France's sphere of influence, "there has not been a sufficient response" from Paris.
All the more so in the case of Gabon, a unique place where the biggest French companies are active, led by the trinity involved in the exploitation of the oil fields there: Total Energy, Maurel & Prom and Perenco. At the same time, the 6th Marine Battalion is stationed at the Charles de Gaulle base in Libreville, and a squadron of French fighter jets is based at Libreville's Leon M'ba airport. Even before the wave of coups began, these bases played a very important role in maintaining France's importance in Africa. Now they are absolutely essential, as the 6,500-strong contingent of troops Paris has maintained for decades in countries including: Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Senegal, have suddenly lost ground.
Sahel on fire
In all these countries, the coup leaders are trying to get rid of French soldiers, even though until recently they were helping local forces fight Islamic State guerrillas. This was happening, for example, as part of Operation Burkhane, which ran until November 2022 and included Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Mali. Only in Gabon are the insurgents not demanding French bases be dismantled.
But there is no such optimism in other countries where coups have taken place. They are now looking for other protectors, hopefully Moscow or Beijing. At the same time, they are teetering on the brink of chaos or civil war. On top of all this, there is the threat of an armed conflict that could ignite the whole of West and Central Africa.
At the end of July 2023, when the military overthrew the democratically elected president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, an ally of France and a close ally of the United States, the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS countries, led by Nigeria, threatened to intervene militarily. Or, to be more precise, those where the coup had not yet taken place.
But Niger is a huge country of 1.2 million square kilometres with a population of 25 million. Although Nigeria, the most powerful country in the region, has an army of more than 200,000 and the ability to cut off its neighbour's electricity and fuel supplies, this does not mean that an armed confrontation can be resolved quickly. In fact, none of the countries involved is ready for war. Therefore despite the ultimatum, ECOWAS is seeking a diplomatic solution. However, the discreet negotiations are being mediated not by France but by Algeria. This is just one more sign of how rapidly Paris' role in this once French-dominated region of Africa is diminishing.
The troops of the Fifth Republic stationed in Niger remained completely passive during the coup, despite the fact that the country had until then been the third largest supplier of uranium for French nuclear reactors, after Kazakhstan and Australia. In 2022, Niger supplied almost 18 percent of France's needs for this raw material.
This begs the question? Why is France losing its influence in Africa so fast? In an interview with the daily Le Figaro, Antoine Glaser - specialist on African studies - shortly diagnosed the problem: "France has missed the globalisation of Africa". And it is hard to disagree with Glaser. The game played by the great powers for the African Continent has intensified in the last decade. And contrary to appearances, it is not the Western countries that are the most expansive.
China's African treasury
The equilibrium that emerged in Africa at the end of the Cold War was quietly undermined at the beginning of the 21st century by China's economic expansion. China's GDP grew at an astonishing rate, reaching a record 14 per cent in just 12 months in 2006. This meant that China's industries needed more and more raw materials and new markets. So as early as 2000, Beijing launched the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and invited African governments to cooperate. China offered Africa access to cheap loans and promised investment.
The talks were helped by the fact that, unlike in Western countries, the Communists were not interested in whether borrowers adhered to democratic rules and respected human rights. Chinese money was mainly used to develop infrastructure to facilitate the extraction, transport and export of raw materials. New roads, railways and ports were built. On the other hand, whatever the motives, it has to be objectively acknowledged that Chinese projects have improved the quality of life for millions of people in the African Continent and have given the countries there a much stronger negotiating position in talks with the US and Western Europe.
China's expansion in Africa has accelerated significantly since 2013 with the launch of the 'One Belt and One Road' project promoted by President Xi Jinping. As a result, trade between China and Africa increased from around 10 billion to more than 100 billion dollars in annual turnover between 2000 and 2016, well ahead of trade between the US and Africa.
"In mid-2015, the China Development Bank, one of the country's leading financial institutions, said it had reserved $890 billion for some 900 projects, mainly in transport, infrastructure and energy" Peter Frankopan describes in his book 'New Silk Roads. The Present and Future of the World. "The overseas part of the project was deliberately designed to include countries on the east coast of Africa and even further afield," he adds.
However, one might ask - where is the catch here?
Over time, Beijing's conquest of Africa has begun to take the tangible form of a debt trap. According to the Global Development Policy Center, between 2000 and 2022, Chinese financial institutions signed no fewer than 1,243 loan agreements with the governments of 49 African countries and their state-owned enterprises, for a total of $170 billion. Among them were all the former French colonies indebted to Beijing.
If the debtor defaults, the lender takes ownership of the pledge, which is guaranteed in the contract. We’re talking about highly strategic assets: natural resources, railways or seaports. For example, a dispute has been going on for five years between Kenya and China's Eximbank over the latter's right to take over the port of Mombasa, a key port on Africa's east coast. The claim stems from Kenya's default on a $3.6 billion railway loan. More than 20 African countries are in similar trouble, with debts up to their ears to China's financial institutions.
Beijing is also looking to bolster China's economic presence with a military one. In July 2017, China opened its first overseas military base outside Asia in Djibouti. The agreement allows for the stationing of 10,000 troops by 2026.
In this way, the People's Republic of China hopes to influence events in the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-al-Mandab Strait, which is the beginning of the sea route to China, while keeping Ethiopian trade in its hands. This is mainly through the port of Doraleh (Djibouti), which is linked to Ethiopia by a 730km railway line. It was, of course, built with Chinese money and by Chinese companies, as were many other railway lines built in Africa in recent years.
To date, more than 6,000 kilometres of railway lines have been built on the continent as part of Beijing's cooperation with African countries, and plans are being drawn up for up to 12,000 kilometres of new trans-African railway lines.
Such an ambitious expansion of the rail network will give Beijing access to transport corridors that will allow it to further expand its economic and political influence in the hinterland of Africa.
Wagner "On Demand"
With far less potential, Russia wants to mean as much as China in Africa. However, the Kremlin is trying to make up for its lack of financial resources with military means and brute force.
A report published in March 2022, entitled "Security, Soft Power and Regime Support: Spheres of Russian Influence in Africa", published by the Tony Blair Institute, warned the West against this. It says: "The Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted how far Vladimir Putin is willing to go to expand Russia's interests beyond its borders according to his vision. As the world focuses on Russia's latest aggression in Europe, Western countries must not lose sight of the wider strategic confrontation with Russia that has been revived in recent years across Africa."
The writers explain that there are two main methods Moscow is using to win over African countries in order to get to their natural resources later on.
The first is the supply of cheap weapons to the armies of the most vicious dictators or governments with whom open cooperation has become too cumbersome for democratic states. "For example, in 2014, after the US withdrew from an agreement with the Nigerian government to supply the country with a contingent of attack helicopters over human rights concerns, Russia signed a deal with Nigeria for six Mi-35 helicopters," the report's authors write.
Following this success, Moscow established various forms of military cooperation with all the Sahel countries. A batch of Mi-35 helicopters was delivered to Niger, while with Mali in 2019 the Kremlin has signed a defence agreement. Agreements for the training of local military units were concluded with, among others: Chad, Nigeria and also: Tanzania, Burundi, Congo and the Central African Republic. It is very likely that these countries paid for their military equipment and training with money borrowed from the Chinese.
However, an even more effective way of quickly consolidating influence and taking control of natural resources was to create an instrument known as a PMC - Private Military Company. Notorious for its atrocities and crimes, the 'Wagner Group' was created in 2014 under the leadership of Russian military intelligence or GRU Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Utkin. And its operations were directed by former criminal, then wealthy businessman, and at that time Putin's trusted man, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The aforementioned report notes that in just a few years, the Wagner Group's mercenaries have become the Kremlin's main tool on the ground in Africa. In Sudan, Russian mercenaries trained rapid response forces in the Darfur region and military personnel in the army on behalf of the regime of President Omar al-Bashir, before he was overthrown in April 2019. Wagner Group troops have also been deployed to Libya in support of General Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) - we discussed this in our recent episode on Libya.
The Wagner PMC operatives arrived in the Central African Republic in 2018 to protect diamond deposits, train the local army and protect President Faustin Archange Touadéra. Three years later, the Kremlin sent them to Mali. Before that, the country had suffered two successive military coups. This was followed by a wave of anti-French demonstrations in the streets of Bamako, Mali’s capital, in which putschists took part.
At one of these, in late October 2021, a member of Mali's Transitional National Council, Mohamed Ousmane Mohamedoun, announced to the crowd: "We are here to demonstrate our national sovereignty. To remind the whole world that sovereignty belongs to the people and that those who have not understood this must catch up today". President Macron, angered by the Malians' demands, ordered the withdrawal of 5,500 French troops from their country, even though they had been fighting jihadists there since 2012. The place of the troops of the Fifth Republic was immediately taken by the "Wagner group".
The next 'catch' could be Cameroon, with whom the Kremlin signed a military cooperation agreement on 12 April 2022. There, the local dictators pay for the military support of the Russian PMCs by agreeing to let the Wagner operatives take over the rights to exploit the deposits of gold, platinum and diamonds, but also uranium, cobalt and lithium.
But just because you own valuable resources does not mean it is easy to sell them. To turn them into cash, you have to ship them around the world by sea. In the case of Cameroon, it has its own ports, but the Kremlin's appetite is also for deposits deep in Africa. This, and the desire to consolidate political and military influence, requires a naval base of its own. Hence the Kremlin's growing interest in Sudan. Over the past 20 years, Russia has been the main supplier of arms to the country, and as of 2018, at least one company of Wagner PMC is stationed there.
"On 1 December 2021, Russia signed an agreement with Sudan allowing it to establish a material and technical security base in Port Sudan", says in its report the Centre for Eastern Studies. The agreement stipulates that the base to be created will have an air defence and radio-electronic warfare system. And its military personnel and their families would enjoy diplomatic immunity and exemption from taxes and customs duties. Clearly, Russia was preparing an extraterritorial 'window on the world' in Africa.
Unfortunately for the Kremlin, civil war has broken out in Sudan and the whole project is in limbo, with local authorities demanding arms supplies in return for ratifying the agreement. Meanwhile, Russia's war with Ukraine means that this, until recently its most valuable asset, is now the one the Kremlin lacks the most.
The desire for a Russian military base on its territory was also announced by the Central African Republic in June 2023. The Central African Republic's ambassador to Russia, Leon Dodonou-Pounagaza, said in an interview with the newspaper Izvestia: "We need a Russian military base with 5,000 to 10,000 soldiers."
Were it not for the war with Ukraine, Moscow would now have the opportunity to quickly carve out an impressive sphere of influence in Africa, mainly through military means. Already today, according to estimates by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (an agency of the US Department of Defence), the Kremlin is involved in various activities in more than 20 African countries and directly supports 14 authoritarian regimes.
Time will tell what the Wagner Group's activities in Africa will look like now that the plane with its entire command has crashed near St Petersburg in August. However, there should be no illusions that the death of Prigozhin or Utkin will put an end to the group's activities in Africa.
Even the cruellest despot can always count on Russian support in the Security Council if he maintains friendly relations with Moscow. At the same time, the Kremlin is doing much to undermine democracy on the African Continent and replace it with authoritarian regimes through military coups. In this way it gains new allies and places to send the 'Wagner group' in search of valuable prey. Exhausted by the war with Ukraine, Russia increasingly needs Africa and its riches.
Nevertheless, the Russian and Chinese appetite for Africa has not escaped America's attention.
Late, but present?
Until recently, political developments in Africa were at best a secondary concern for Washington. But the need to compete globally with China and contain Russia's military expansion has meant that the US can no longer stand by.
Yet the Joe Biden administration apparently wants to avoid repeating the mistake made by President George Bush senior in 1992, when he sent 28,000 troops to Somalia on a peacekeeping mission under the UN banner. They quickly became embroiled in endless fighting with local gangs and guerrilla units. This culminated in the disastrous action in Mogadishu, which later became the basis for Ridley Scott's famous film Black Hawk Down.
Since then, the Americans have been reluctant to send troops to Africa, preferring diplomacy and drones. The latter have been used for years to hunt Islamic State militants, particularly in Somalia, where the rebellion was sparked in 2012 by the ISIS-linked Ash-Shabab organisation. The only US military base on the African Continent, Camp Lemonnier in the capital Djibouti, also serves to maintain influence in the northeastern corner of Africa. It is located next to a French and Japanese base and across the bay from a Chinese one.
Compared to the dynamism with which Beijing and Moscow operate, the US actions, however, seemed more than modest. Until June 2021. Then, at the G7 summit, President Biden announced the Build Back Better World initiative, or "B3W" for short.
The US wanted to push Chinese influence out of Africa by offering more than $40 billion in funding for infrastructure development and various types of investment.
Beijing responded with lightning speed, starting a month later with the promotion of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which came into existence in 2018, and promising a range of economic support.
Six months later, Europe awoke from its lethargy after the first bids of the giants. On 17 and 18 February 2022, at the European Union-African Union summit in Brussels, it was agreed that the EU countries would offer the organisation an investment package of 150 billion euros. This, according to the official communiqué, would be used to build: "a more diversified, sustainable and resilient economy" in the African Continent. Incidentally, it was boasted that foreign direct investment from Europe to Africa had already exceeded €240 billion by 2019, while American investment was just over €42 billion and Chinese investment just under €40 billion. By the way, this shows that Beijing prefers to lend to Africans and then enforce repayment rather than take the investment risk.
A week after the Brussels summit, Russia invaded Ukraine and Western attention turned to a war that could turn the existing European order on its head. African issues then took on a completely different dimension - and focused on energy.
Back in April 2022, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi sent Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and ENI CEO Claudio Descalzi to Congo and Angola. The main purpose of their trip was to initiate permanent cooperation in the extraction of natural gas in these countries and its supply to Italy. Draghi, on the other hand, travelled personally to Algeria, where he signed an agreement with President Abd al-Majid Tabbun to significantly increase purchases of blue fuel from Algerian fields. This allowed the Italian prime minister to boast of his personal success after the summit of EU leaders on 24 June 2022. "The steps we have taken are beginning to bear fruit," he said. "Dependence on Russian gas, which was 40 per cent last year, is now 25 per cent," Draghi pointed out proudly.
Olaf Scholz had less reason to rejoice. The German chancellor also travelled to the African Continent to meet the leaders of gas-rich Senegal and Niger. However, a network of gas pipelines or ports is needed to bring the gas to Germany. Meanwhile, a series of military coups in the Sahel countries soon followed.
Currently, China and Russia are achieving further successes in Africa. Neither Beijing nor Moscow is interested in introducing democratic principles and respect for human rights. This is a great advantage when it comes to establishing terms of cooperation with local dictators. This is not to say that the Western powers have not done business with African autocrats in the past. But at present they cannot transparently do the bidding of Russia and China, and no one currently has the strength or resources to support democratic initiatives in Africa.
So the United States, along with the European Union, is ceding ground to its competitors. They are avoiding military operations and the huge resources promised two years ago have remained largely on paper. The American 'B3W' project and the EU's agreement with the African Union seem dead today because the funds promised for their implementation have not been collected. For the West, the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, which has hit the European economy hard, are now more important. Weakened and torn by internal conflicts, France is therefore quietly withdrawing from its former colonies without even trying to put up a fight. President Emmanuel Macron announced on 24 September that the contingent of 1,400 French soldiers still stationed in Niger would be withdrawn. Their evacuation began at the beginning of October.
African states remain poor, weak and easily destabilised, while their political elites remain prone to corruption. This encourages dependence on external protectors. China has the most resources to do this. Russia seems very determined.
But it is hard to believe that this African race will be handed over by the West. According to UN reports, Africa holds some 30 per cent of the world's mineral resources, 12 per cent of its oil reserves and 8 per cent of its natural gas. These riches include lithium, cobalt and rare earth metals. These are the resources needed to realise the ambitious plans for energy transition and electromobility in the European Union and North America.
In addition, tens of billions of dollars are being invested by Western companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell to prepare for the exploitation of gas fields in Mauritania, Tanzania, Mozambique and Senegal.
All this leads one to believe that the expansion of external powers into Africa so far is just a small warm-up before the real race begins. Today, however, it is Beijing and Moscow that are in pole position in this race.
