Niger 5 – Francafrique: Niger and the emerging “African Spring”?

The great fear in the early 20th century – Still the great fear in the 21st

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– “La Françafrique ne se réduisant pas au foucardisme, comment la définir?

Il s’agit, selon nous, d’un système de domination fondé sur une alliance stratégique e asymétrique entre une partie des élites françaises et une partie de leur homologues africaines. Cette alliance, héritée d’une longue histoire coloniale, mêle des mécanismes officiels, connus, visibles, assumés par les États. Et des mécanismes occultes, souvent illégaux, parfois criminels, toujours inavouables. Ces mécanismes, qui se déploient dans unre relative indifférence de l’opinion publique française, permettent à ces élites franco-africaines de s’approprier et de se partages des resources, économiques, mais aussi politiques, au détriment des peuples africans”

Borrel et al: L’Empire Qui Ne Veut Pas Mourir: Une Histoire de la Françafrique. p. 9

– My translation:

“Françafrique cannot be reduced to Foucartism,(1) how, then, to define it?

It is, in our opinion, a system of domination exists based on a strategic and asymmetrical alliance between a part of the French elites and their African counterparts. This alliance, inherited from a long colonial history, combines official, known, visible mechanisms assumed by the States with secret mechanisms, often illegal, sometimes criminal, always unmentionable. These mechanisms, are deployed with a generalized indifference of French public opinion allowing these Franco-African elites to appropriate and share resources, economic, but also political, to the detriment of African peoples.”

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ECOWAS. It started as a multistate economic alliance in West Africa but with a little help from Washington and Paris through NATO has morphed into a  military NATO  proxy. Will it invade Niger to restore that country’s deposed, but “duly elected” (perhaps not) president Mohamed Bazoum? Could Niger military resistance – even if assisted by its allies in Burkina Faso and Mali that have promised to come to Niger’s aid? And if ECOWAS – under opposition pressure from its own population as well as those from other West African countries balks on intervention, will France and the United States, either together or alone intervene? Or will the NATO powers limit their opposition to the new Niger government to other forms of hybrid warfare – sanctions (of course, what else?), political and diplomatic isolation, weaponized media coverage?

Or is the world witnessing something else, the full blown emergence of what might be called “the African Spring?” Is it just a rebellion localized to West Africa against 150 years of French exploitatin? Part of an all-African process of change? Or, as I suspect, even changes needed to be understood globally in terms of the emergence of a generally more multipolar world and the continued erosion, tottering of a unipolar, U.S. hegemonic dominated realities? … or all of above? 

Certainly since the military power take over in Niger, the new government has enjoyed widespread, near universal popular support. Nor is it unique.  The coup in Niger follows coups in Mali (August 2020 and May 2021), Burkina Faso (January 2022 and September 2022), and Guinea (September 2021). As noted by Vijay Prashad and Kambale Musavuli, each of these was led by military officers angered by the presence of French and US troops and by economic crises inflicted on their countries in different forms for the past 150 years, first as outright French colonies and then since the late 1950s and early 1960s as newly independent countries, independent that is more in name than in essence, in the grip of a less obvious, more subtle and yet more pervasive form of domination. The “variety” of independence that France (De Gaulle, others) – still very much in force in Niger, and the rest of  Francafrique, was offering its former African colonies was“neocolonialism” – with all its hidden conditions included.  Although its sounds more innocuous, perhaps on the surface less repressive, racist, Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah cut to the chase, describing neocolonialism as the worst form of imperialism  (“la pire forme de l’impérialisme”).

It is against this system of French constructed and dominated neocolonialism that the coup leaders in Niger and its neighbors are rebelling., that much is crystal clear.

Sooner or later, as the Vietnamese and others  before them, the people of West Africa will find their way out of the neocolonial trap, which the French gently refer to as “Cooperation”. The only question is will it be over the short term, more or less gracefully or over the medium or longer term, gracelessly in response to the kind of violence France has resorted to in IndoChina, Madagascar, Algeria, Cameroon to name just a few of its more violent attempts to stop the flow of history?

What is not at all clear at the moment is how “the West” – frankly a vague and inaccurate term that hides and softens a more sharply defined reality – the imperialist powers – will respond to what is nothing less than a revolutionary upsurge. That it is led, ironically (for some anyhow) by U.S. trained African military officers seeming to bite the hand that fed them should come as no surprise – as the most modern, highly organized, technically and politically competent element in Niger and overall African society.  Regardless of how the present crisis plays out – if Niger is “permitted” to follow its own path to national development or if through the same kind of military intervention that destroyed Iraq, Libya and tried to likewise in Syria, Afghanistan – that this popular rebellion – for that is what it is – will be put down with the kind of utter brutality and violence that characterized those former exercises in “regime change” – one thing is clear: French credibility in Africa is shattered forever.

Sooner or later, as the Vietnamese and others  before them, the people of West Africa will find their way out of the neocolonial trap, which the French gently refer to as “Cooperation”. The only question is will it be over the short term, more or less gracefully or over the medium or longer term, gracelessly in response to the kind of violence France has resorted to in IndoChina, Madagascar, Algeria, Cameroon to name just a few of its more violent attempts to stop the flow of history?

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Notes:

1. “Foucartism” refers to one of the main architects – if not the main architect – of French post-WW2 neocolonial relationship with Africa. An “eminent grise” – man behind the scenes, rarely up front, Jacques Foucart helped De Gaulle set up a system of nominal independence of formerAfrican French colonies that included even tighter control of the former colonies economic, security, financial systems, ie, classic case of “neo” or what I refer to as “sneaky” colonialism, independence in name, continued dependance in fact. It is against this system that Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso are rebelling.

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Source: .T. Borrel et. al L’Empire Qui Ne Veut Pas Mourir: Une Histoire de la Françafrique. p.28