Coups and neo-colonialism

The ‘coup belt’ has become a popular term among commentators and someone has even created a Wikipedia entry on it: ‘a modern geopolitical concept and neologism to describe the region of Western Africa, Central Africa and the Sahel that has a high prevalence of coups d’état’ (Wikipedia n.d.). It is currently prevalent in European and North American media, referring to the recent military coup in Niger: ‘Coast to coast, a corridor of coups’, titled the New York Times, ‘a domino chain of countries ruled by leaders who seized power by force, fueling instability and presenting a conundrum for the United States’ (Walsh 2023). On 26 July 2023, a coup led by the commander of the presidential guard, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, toppled Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, elected in 2021. This was the seventh military coup in Western and Central Africa within three years. It followed a first coup in Mali in August 2020 and a second one nine months later in May 2021, one in Chad in April 2021, in Guinea in September 2021, and two in Burkina Faso in 2022 (in January and September).

One may wonder about what is conceptual about this neologism; the geopolitical, at least, is somehow obvious: ‘a conundrum for the United States’, according to the New York Times. ‘With the coup in Niger, Europe and the United States are losing their last reliable partner in the Sahel as Russia’s influence grows’, predicates the German magazine Der Spiegel (Gebauer et al. 2023). The long-known colonial and more or less openly racist framing of the Sahel as an ‘ungoverned’, ‘uncontrolled’ and savage zone, characterised by brutal conflicts driven by irrational ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ motives or by ‘greed’ for mineral resources (on the part of greedy rebels, of course, not that of multinational extractive companies) has not been decommissioned. Paul Collier, who in the same New York Times article speaks of the ‘greedy’ African rebels, advances his concerns that ‘Sahelian Africa is going to melt down’ (Walsh 2023). The dominant framing of Western media reporting about the recent coups is indeed a geopolitical one, classifying African politics within the current remake of the East–West bloc confrontation.

The key point of reference appears to be the Russian Wagner group, a military/mercenary firm entangled in a network of political–military consultancies, Internet troll agencies, and mining companies. Wagner troops are so far deployed to three countries on the continent: the Central African Republic, Mali and Libya. Human rights organisations have documented numerous severe human rights violations – including killing and torture – committed by Wagner personnel, particularly in the Central African Republic and Mali (Amnesty International 2023; Human Rights Watch 2022, 2023; Serwat et al. 2022). When it comes to popular support for Wagner and Russia in Niger and elsewhere on the continent, the few existing reports rely mainly on reports by European and North American media (see, for example, the references in Stanyard, Vircoulon, and Rademeyer 2023, 88). More systematic data are missing; yet it might be premature to infer from photos and videos circulated in (social) media that popular support for Russia or even for the deployment of Wagner mercenaries would be serious, comprehensive and widespread. Still, given the persistent threat of non-state, often jihadist armed groups in the region, and the feeling that many people have that their governments cannot contain these, some may hope that Wagner could help in the fight against the armed groups. The Russian flag may also be considered an expression of the critical stance towards the influence of France, and particularly the French military presence in the region. Media report that ‘in Niger, pro-coup demonstrators assembled waving Russian flags and chanting “down with France”’ (Malik 2023). Indeed, the Russian flag in some places has become an emblem for the rejection of France’s influence. Yet the framing of ‘France vs Russia’ reflects the proclivities of European media and their political discourses and geopolitical interests rather than a serious analysis of the recent conflicts in West Africa (Engels 2023; Harrison 2023).

Wagner and related firms make enormous profits from resource extraction. In the Central African Republic, Wagner and companies linked to its former head Yevgeny Prigozhin (who died in an air crash on 23 August 2023) were granted concessions for the extraction of gold, diamonds and timber, in return for their military support to President Faustin-Archange Touadéra (AEOW 2023). Prigozhin more or less directly controlled several mining companies based in the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Sudan and Russia (Stanyard, Vircoulon, and Rademeyer 2023). The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s (GI-TOC’s) February 2023 report presents the example of the Russian mining company Nordgold, which operates mines in Burkina Faso and Guinea, among others (ibid., 46). Nordgold’s director, Alexey Mordashov, stepped formally down in early 2022 as he was targeted by sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mordashov is probably one of the richest people in Russia. He became known to international media for his US$500 million superyacht, registered in the Cayman Islands, that was driven full speed from the Seychelles to Vladivostok in March–April 2022 to escape sanctions.

Nordgold was no longer able to export its gold to Switzerland but shifted to Dubai, according to the GI-TOC report: ‘Despite these challenges, Nordgold was granted a licence to operate a new gold mine in Burkina Faso in 2022’ (ibid., 46) – and despite the facts, one may add, that the disastrous social and ecological impact of large-scale gold mining is well documented, and that gold mining in Burkina Faso, as elsewhere, has been accompanied by extensive protests and conflicts (Ayeh 2021; Drechsel, Engels, and Schäfer 2019). Yet Nordgold’s first gold mine in Burkina Faso, the Bissa mine, was opened in 2013 and, until now, has received little attention from Western media and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), other than some that are already concerned with extractivism. The same holds true for other industrial mines operated by companies from England, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, whose profits and impact on the local population and environment are more or less the same.

The end of French neo-colonialism in Africa?

The military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have selectively taken up the widespread popular opposition to French neo-colonial influence. In Mali, French lost its status as an official language in July 2023 and was instead declared a ‘working language’. The junta in Niger revoked military cooperation agreements with France, which means that the 1000 to 1500 French soldiers stationed in Niger will leave the country. After coups, the governments of Mali and Burkina Faso kicked out French troops, some of which moved to Niger. However, one should remember that US troops remain in Niger (Associated Press 2023) and that mining concessions continue to be granted. In August 2023, the Malian interim government (Conseil national de transition) unanimously adopted a new mining law that would, if approved by the president, significantly increase the state’s share of all mines from 20 to 35% and would prohibit the export of lithium in its unrefined state (in order to promote processing within the country) (Africa Intelligence 2023). The Nigerien junta announced that it was stopping uranium exports, though it is still unclear whether and how this will be effected. According to a spokesperson for the French company Orano (previously Areva), which has extracted uranium in Niger for France’s nuclear power stations for decades, the ‘recent crisis does not have any short-term impact on Orano’s supply capacities’ (Schwikowski 2023, my translation). Despite all anti-colonial – or more precisely anti-French – rhetoric, neo-colonialist and imperialist relations of exploitation and domination to date seem as little up for renegotiation as the capitalist model of extractivism.

Yet the French government reacted promptly and vehemently: on 29 July and 6 August 2023, France suspended all its development aid and budget support operations to Niger and Burkina Faso. It had already done so for Mali in November 2022. The consequences are far-reaching. For example, students who had already received confirmations of visas and travel grants to pursue their studies in France received an email from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the end of August informing them that their grants had been withdrawn: ‘I regret to inform you that we are cancelling our support for your stay in France; all Campus France services are cancelled (airfare, allowances, and health insurance)’ (Le Nevé 2023). On 13 September 2023, according to Syndeac and other French arts and culture unions, their members received a message from French regional directorates for culture asking them to ‘suspend all cooperation with the following countries until further notice: Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso’ (Africanews 2023).

Opposition to France’s neo-colonial influence in West Africa has been growing steadily over the last years (see ROAPE 172 editorial: Engels 2022). The recent coups, however, are not a result of this; nor are they an expression of the region’s or certain states’ orientation towards Russia, despite the widespread geopolitical framing in European and Northern American media. The coups demonstrate, first and foremost, the role that national armies play in many African states since formal decolonialisation: the historical entanglement of the military and politics. Coups are typically the result of frustrations, cleavages and power struggles within a state’s security forces. The recent ones, in Niger in July 2023 and in Burkina Faso in January and September 2022, are cases in point. The coup in Niger was launched by the country’s presidential guard, a military elite unit, after President Mohamed Bazoum announced his plan to reorganise it. In Burkina Faso, frustration within the army about the lack of success in the fight against armed jihadist groups is ever present. Lower ranks have long felt ignored by the military leadership. Ibrahim Traoré, who a little later led the coup on 30 September, had ineffectively demanded a meeting with then President Paul-Henri Damiba, the head of the January coup, to present to him the claims of the lower ranks, notably those within the putschist movement (the Mouvement patriotique pour la sauvegarde et la restauration, MPSR) itself. Damiba, lieutenant-colonel and one of Burkina Faso’s highest military ranks, and the leader of the Niger junta, General Tchiani, both hold influential senior ranks and can be seen as exceptions rather than the rule. Coups are mostly carried out by junior officers who do not see any chance to prevail within the army (Coups from below: Kandeh 2004), as in the case of the September 2022 coup in Burkina Faso.

Second, the coups underline the issue of the legitimacy of elected governments. Media reporting regularly points out that those coups toppled ‘elected’ presidents (except of course in cases when a coup was launched against a military junta), and the main demand raised by the ‘international community’ in situations of coups is a schedule to organise elections. Yet in systems where access to political office depends on personal wealth and clientelist relations, where ‘regimes in power … use state power to choose their own opponents in elections’ (Zeilig and Sylla 2023), and where security in some regions of a country is so fragile that electoral offices and polling stations cannot open; voters are threatened; or ballots cannot be transported to the counting venue, elections are not necessarily at the top of everyone’s agenda. For many people facing the very difficult conditions of living and working, it might be more obvious to assess the legitimacy of a government by the price of bread and fuel, by their chance of going to and from their agricultural fields without being attacked by armed groups, or by the chance of their children finding a job when they graduate from school or university. So the open questions remain – what should political and economic institutions look like in order to make this possible? And how and by whom might they be created, where decision making is not via military power or personal wealth?

The articles in this issue

Elias Aguigah takes up the recent debate in Europe, namely in Germany, France and the UK, on the restitution of colonial looted art. He starts with the example of the Benin bronzes, 20 out of at least 1100 art pieces that were stolen by the British colonial military from Benin City in 1897 and then stored in German museums for over 100 years, namely the ethnological museum in Berlin. A collection of these art pieces is today presented in the Humboldt Forum, the highly contested ‘modern’ rebuilding of the ancient Prussian Berlin Palace. After a speech given by French President Emmanuel Macron at the University of Ouagadougou in November 2017, and a report commissioned by him and written by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy (2018) on African cultural heritage held in French museums, restitution of colonial looted art became a topic in German public debates, too, and demands for the return of artefacts such as the Benin bronzes could no longer be ignored. Whereas restitution of looted art is predominantly discussed from perspectives of cultural studies, art history, anthropology and legal studies, Aguigah offers a political economy analysis of colonial looting and restitution, and of the role of museums as actors in the art market, taking the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde (Berlin ethnological museum) as an example.

Max Ajl, Habib Ayeb and Ray Bush analyse the policies of the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and of national governments addressing the impact of the climate crisis in North Africa. International financial and donor institutions have always promoted market-based policies of food security, and still do so today, despite persistent calls by peasant and community organisations all over the world for a substantially different, people- and community-oriented approach of food sovereignty. Agrarian policies promoting large-scale, technology- and capital- intensive and market-oriented farming, that are based on privatisation and commodification of land, systematically result in persisting poverty, indebtedness and food insecurity in poor rural households with and without land. The authors demonstrate that the fundamental crisis that many rural people in general, and peasants in particular, are experiencing today is due not only to the impact of climate change but to agrarian policies – first colonial, then liberal, and then neoliberal. At the same time, the climate crisis itself largely results from global capitalist development, which is sustained by international institutions such as the World Bank. That said, it seems ridiculous that the same institutions are now claiming to support ‘the capacity of small-scale producers to “adapt” to the climate emergency’; in contrast, the authors insist, ‘it is necessary to start by deconstructing the evolution of their social and economic conditions over the past decades’ (Ajl et al. 2023, 186).

Luke Sinwell, Trevor Ngwane and Terri Maggott demonstrate how, 30 years after the end of apartheid, racial capitalism (a term coined by Cedric J. Robinson) is omnipresent in South Africa today. Taking the energy sector as an example, they analyse how racism and capitalism work hand in hand, perpetuating apartheid-era exploitative and discriminatory practices to mitigate the current energy crisis in the country. The energy supplier uses controlled blackouts in black working-class areas to avoid the collapse of the energy system. In an empirical study of Soweto and Orange Farm, the authors illustrate how blackouts are used and justified by the electricity supplier Eskom and the authorities, and how they are challenged by the residents.

Luke Melchiorre analyses the political rise of Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi (aka Bobi Wine) and his group ‘People Power, Our Power’. Bobi Wine is a popular musician who was elected to parliament in 2017. His main adversary, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, as well as international media, describe Wine as ‘populist’. Melchiorre takes this as a starting point for his intervention into the general debate on populism, which has been coined most prominently by Ernesto Laclau. Melchiorre argues that in a society such as that of Uganda which is, as most of the continent, characterised by a predominantly young generation (young in terms of age, but also in terms of youth as a social, generational and gendered category), populism can be generational:

a mobilising discourse which generates a new collective sense of political identity among supporters of a populist leader or movement, around the nodal point of ‘the people’ … , defined primarily in relation to their generational status as youth, and in antagonistic opposition to an elite, which is depicted as defending a gerontocractic political order. (Melchiorre 2023, 214)

With this, the author makes a double contribution: he contributes an African case study to the study of populism, which is thus far dominated by studies on Europe and the Americas. At the same time, he demonstrates how Laclau’s concepts can be useful for the study of political mobilisation on the continent.

In the debates and briefings in this issue, we continue the debate initiated in ROAPE issue 175 and developed on Roape.net by Fana Gebresenbet and Yonas Tariku (2023a, 2023b). They have critically engaged with the November 2022 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA) between the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Gebresenbet and Tariku have argued, among other things, that the Pretoria Agreement, as it is known, may have marked the end of ethno-nationalism in Ethiopia. Yet in so doing they have been vehemently criticised for being one-sided, pro the FDRE government and, as Jon Abbink argues, for being far too hasty in drawing conclusions as to the implications of the agreement after just six months. In the first debate piece in this issue, Abbink suggests that the authors have been short term and selective in their analysis, superficial and incomplete in their reflection of the agreement, and that they have made ‘no substantive contribution to fundamentally understand the import of this [Cessation of Hostilities Agreement]’.

Gebresenbet and Tariku respond to the earlier criticism of Gebrehiwot et al. (2023, 15 June) and to Abbink’s more recent observations in this issue. Gebresenbet and Tariku argue that their critics have not engaged with their argument, attacks have been personalised, and it was never their intension to offer a comprehensive conflict analysis. Their debate, moreover, implied that the CoHA would be buttressed by a negotiated peace agreement. They certainly refute any lack of empathy with those impacted by violence. Importantly for Gebresenbet and Tariku, and for this journal, is that the debate is taking place. It has asked critical questions with the hope of creating new ideas and positions rather than restricting and limiting critical engagement. For the moment we will now draw a line under this debate, but will no doubt return to it later.

The first briefing in this issue is by Dhouha Djerbi. She revisits the role of Tunisia’s leading trade union organisation, the UGTT, in reacting to the International Monetary Fund and its two recent highly contentious and conditional financing packages. Djerbi traces how the UGTT was effective in its critique and how it has helped shape the discourse about Tunisia’s foreign debt in the post-2010 period. In the second briefing, Vincent Chenzi and Admire Ndamba explore the impact of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions on some of Harare’s poorest workers in the informal sector. They examine how restrictions destroyed livelihoods and how lockdown had an impact on local survival and accumulation strategies. They also argue that there are many implications of their findings for other African countries.

Colin Darch provides a fascinating and detailed review article of a third volume, published in 2021, of documents in Russian that explore Soviet/Russian relations with African countries. The authors have assembled 1000 pages of material linked to the Moscow Centre of African Studies and Darch is keen to explore the characteristics and significance of the collection and to ask how strategically coherent Soviet Africa policy was in the 1960s and early 1970s.