The core agenda of the return of the military is an anti-democracy project and in that sense is an rea existential threat to ECOWAS which has worked consistently to promote unity on the basis of a normative system that is based on democratic values and practices.
As we have pointed out repeatedly, democracy construction has had many pitfalls over the years but as of 2020, the whole region still retained significant commitment to it. Now, the programme is to demolish it. Before addressing the issues, it’s important to first look at the way the geopolitics of great powers is playing out.
The return of the military to power in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger have been accompanied by an orchestrated campaign against France as the architect of the underdevelopment of the Sahelian countries and a saboteur of the battle against violence extremism. Since 1990, a striking 78% of the 27 coups in sub-Saharan Africa have occurred in Francophone states leading some commentators to ask whether France – or the legacy of French colonialism – is to blame?
Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, who was named prime minister by the military junta in Mali in September 2022, launched an attack against France criticising their “neo-colonialist, condescending, paternalist and vengeful policies”. Anti-French vitriol have flourished in all four countries, especially in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, where the military governments ended a long-standing accord that allowed French troops to operate in their countries.
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In Niger, former President Mohamed Bazoum is presented as a puppet for French interests justifying the coup. The military regimes have been very engaged in organising popular protests against France and its interests in the countries.
The historical record provides some support for these grievances. French colonial rule established political systems designed to extract valuable resources while using repressive strategies to retain control. The British did the same. The difference was that while the United Kingdom learnt to give up on maintaining the colonial system after independence, France persisted in nurturing and sustaining it.
The French were very elaborate in retaining neo-colonial institutions. Seven of the nine Francophone states in West Africa still use the CFA franc, which is pegged to the euro and guaranteed by France, as their currency, a legacy of French economic policy towards its colonies. France also forged defence agreements that saw it regularly intervene militarily on behalf of unpopular pro-French leaders to keep them in power.
In many cases, this strengthened the hand of corrupt and abusive figures such as Chad’s former President Idriss Déby and former Burkinabe President Blaise Compaoré, creating additional challenges for the struggle for democracy.
Although France did not intervene militarily to reinstate any of the recently deposed heads of state, all were seen as being “pro-French”. The narrative is that there is a new crop of military officers in these countries that understand how the FrancAfrique work and were able to hide their intentions from France until the struck.
Worse still, the relationship between French political leaders and their allies in Africa was often corrupt, creating a powerful and wealthy elite at the expense of African citizens. François-Xavier Verschave, a prominent French economist, coined the term Francafrique to refer to a neocolonial relationship hidden by “the secret criminality in the upper echelons of French politics and economy”.
These ties, he alleged, resulted in large sums of money being “misappropriated”. Although recent French governments have sought to distance themselves from Françafrique, there are constant reminders of the problematic relations between France, French business interests and Africa, including a number of embarrassing corruption cases. Such scandals were often swept under the carpet while France’s African political allies were strong, and France’s military support helped to maintain stability.
In recent years, the ability of France and other Western states to ensure order has deteriorated, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to criticism.
Meanwhile, the controversial Wagner Group leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in August when his plane was blown off the sky had built bridges into Francophone Africa. He was a man of many talents said the Russian President, Putin, his friend/enemy.
Indeed, one of his greatest talents is developing elaborate and sophisticated ways of weaponising the genuine and deep history of Francafrique terrible maintenance of its colonial grip on the governments and resources of Francophone Africa for its interest while pretending to propose liberation.
The purpose has been to introduce in its stead Russian neo-colonial control of the said territories through the instrumentality of installing military dictatorships. His method has been through deliberate and sustained manipulation through the social media.
The methodology and practice in this field have been developed by certain companies and States such as Russia to impact on social and political processes to obtain predetermined outcomes despite the fact that their actions are toxic and anti-democratic.
One of the most infamous practitioners has been the firm Cambridge Analytica which acquired and maintained complex databases on the likes, dislikes, pressure points, and political positions of millions of social media users in order to deliver tailored ads and polemics.
The technique is based on the idea of ‘informational dominance,’ which is the idea that if you can capture every channel of information around a person and then inject content around them, you can change their perception of what’s actually happening.
While the internet was assumed to have broken information monopoly by appearing to offer users numerous and diverse sources of information, what it often does today is to lock people into this information cocoon where they essentially have only one source which is not only biased but also manipulative.
Since the coup phenomena started, social media have been very active in fueling emotions that tear people apart and heighten tensions between neighbours. An interesting report from Cable for example gives the following examples following the coup in Niger.
The first is a viral video purporting to show dozens of soldiers from Nigeria entering a village in Niger with guns suggesting that Nigeria had already invaded Niger. In the video, some soldiers could be seen shooting sporadically into the air, while chanting military songs. The video which gathered thousands of views appeared on a TikTok account, where it has now been deleted.
Checks by The Cable revealed that the video is old and does not show the Nigerian army fighting in Niger. An eight-year-old version of the video was found on YouTube where it was published with the headline: “SIERRA LEONE: REBELS LOYAL TO OLD REGIME STILL FIGHTING ECOMOG”.
The video was posted in July 2015 by the Associated Press (AP), a US news agency. Additional information in the caption revealed that the footage was filmed in 1998.
A second example they give makes a claim that Algeria is ready to defend its neighbour Niger if they are attacked by any country. On August 1, an X account by the handle name, Africa Archives, with over 507,000 followers said: “Algeria will support Niger in case of external military aggression, according to the Algerian publication Intel Kirby.
They reported on the potential invasion of Niger under the leadership of ECOWAS.” The post appeared on multiple accounts on X and Instagram.
TheCable examined a couple of recent tweets shared by Intel Kirby, the purported source of the claim. Algeria never supported the military intervention in Niger and never said it would back the coup leaders should there be an external intervention.
In fact, Algeria’s foreign ministry said the country still recognises ousted Mohamed Bazoum as Niger’s president.
Another example is a video of a man in blue attire and crying profusely was purported to be Ahmat Jidoud, Niger’s finance minister. The viral post claimed that Jidoud was weeping after he was “told by the new military Junta to account for all the stolen money of the country in the next 48 hrs or face execution by firing squad”.
The post was shared on X and a couple of Facebook pages. Checks revealed that the video with the misleading caption has been on the internet as far back as December 2021, and has nothing to do with the coup or the finance minister. The identity of the man in the trending video is Marou Amadou, Niger’s former justice minister.
Other fake videos include the arrival of Wagner forces by plane at Niamey airport which turned out to be an old video from Sudan and soldiers from Niger in training to deal with ECOWAS troops all of which were fabricated.
Maybe the most serious threat to ECOWAS since the coup phenomena has been the demonstrations and social media coverage depicting the organisation as a agent ready to act in support of France and the United States by attacking Niger.
In the public imagination of many in West Africa, ECOWAS was essentially working as a foreign agent by insisting on the return to the constitutional order. Paid crowds were activated by the military to rally and insult our own regional organisation for its insistence on keeping its values while the putschists were saluted for being the new saviours of the nation determined to throw out the imperialists and restore African sovereignty.
On Francafrique, the Wagner approach was to devote years of bombarding Francophone Africa with images through Facebook, WhatsApp, Tik Tok, Twitter and other outlets that France was actively providing arms to jihadists to keep terrorism active. Prigozhin used his Internet Research Agency (IRA), an online “troll farm,” and the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC) for the work.
Today, there is informational dominance in Francophone Africa that terrorism remains because of France and the solution is to bring in the Russians. I have studied Francafrique and I know its reach and damage. I am aware of the number of coups France has organised in Africa to keep its empire alive and a lot of the criticisms about France are true and justified.
The thousands of video images appearing to show French helicopters delivering arms to terrorists however have been shown to be fake. There was also a significant scaling up of fake numbers on what Francophone Africa pays France for colonialism.
The weaponization was in the association in the social media that the time of revolt against France has arrived, which I support, and the only viable partner is Wagner and Russia, a country without a history of colonial misdeeds.
A number of sophisticated social media influencers emerged, some of whom are on Wagner payroll to lead the advocacy for Russia as the solution. They include Nathalie Yanm (@Nath_Yamb), Kemi Seba (@KemiSeba) from Benin Republic and a French lecturer @FranklinNyamsi with Cameroonian roots.
They lead the social media campaign and have also been active in the Russia-Africa summits. Over the past five years, they have succeeded in making the strong association between the idea that France must be thrown out, which most Africans support and that Russia is the way forward. In a recent interview, Kemi Seba has argued that turning to Russia is a tactical move to support African countries as they send France packing and not a strategic move because they do not want to replace French with Russian, Chinese or Turkish neo-colonialism.
Africans must rise to the imperative that the objective of combating neocolonialism must be for autonomy not for a replacement a neocolonial power.
The most insidious aspect of this weaponization is the presentation of military vanguardism as the pathway to salvation. They do so with the knowledge that the current generation of African youth have no experience or knowledge of military rule and the negative consequences of dictatorship.
Mali is expelling over 20,000 French and UN troops for 1,000 mercenaries for whom it is allegedly paying 10 million dollars monthly. Wagner fighters have been accused of committing atrocities alongside the Malian army fighting jihadists.
Since Wagner began working in Mali, in December 2021, civilian casualties have increased by more than 270% and the direction of travel is the strengthening of terrorism. A UN report released in May described how Malian soldiers, overseen by Wagner fighters, killed around 500 mostly unarmed civilians in a village in the Mopti region over five days in March 2022.
Russia’s relationship with Central African Republic (CAR) first became known in 2018 with an agreement that former Russian officers would come to offer military training. The country has suffered from ongoing conflict since independence in 1960.
In 2013, mainly Muslim rebels seized control of the largely Christian country. Self-Defence militias were formed to fight back, leading to widespread massacres along religious lines. After President Faustin-Archange Touadéra came to office in 2016, the country started shifting its strategic alliance from France, the former colonial power, towards Russia.
According to Human Rights Watch the Russian forces have been responsible for murder, unlawful detention and torture.
Russian mercenaries have been accused of summarily executing, torturing and beating civilians in the Central African Republic. As Wagner is responsible for the personal security of the CAR President, he is today essentially their prisoner and must obey their command.
In the absence of foreign currency for their payments, Wagner/Russian forces takeover natural resources which they exploit themselves and take out of the country. Wagner subsidiaries received unrestricted logging rights and control of the lucrative Ndassima gold mine in CAR.
Wagner has operated in Sudan since 2017, training Sudanese troops, guarding mineral resources, and suppressing dissent against the government of President Omar al-Bashir, all in exchange for gold exports to Russia. Their role in Libya has been no less edifying.
Francophone Africa should be very careful about what it is advocating and praying for. If the desired outcome is liberation and control of resources by the said countries, Russia is not necessarily the best path. New African partnerships must set out to fully exploit avenues for multipolarity.
Despite considerable funding and troops, the French-led international response to Islamist insurgencies in the Sahel region has failed to enable West African governments to regain control of their territories. This was particularly significant to the fate of civilian leaders in Burkina Faso and Mali because their inability to protect their own citizens created the impression that French support was more of a liability than a blessing.
In turn, growing popular anger and frustration emboldened military leaders to believe that a coup would be celebrated by citizens. Yet, for all of the mistakes France has made in its dealings with its former colonies in Africa over the years, the instability Francophone states are currently experiencing cannot be solely laid at its door. It has hardly been the only former colonial power to prop up authoritarian leaders abroad.
Some of those opposed to French involvement in Niger have shown their support for Russia instead.
During the dark days of the Cold War, the UK and the United States helped prop up a number of dictators in return for their loyalty, from Daniel arap Moi in Kenya to Mobutu Sese Seko in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The strong relationship between coups and the former colonial power was also much less prevalent in previous eras. Four of the countries that have seen the highest number of coup attempts since 1952 are Nigeria (8), Ghana (10), Sierra Leone (10), and Sudan (17), which all experienced British rule.
While the recent trend of coups in Francophone states may reflect the legacy of FrancAfrique coming home to roost, it has also been underpinned by “unprecedented” levels of insecurity in parts of West Africa and the Sahel region, with “armed groups, violent extremists and criminal networks” undermining public confidence in civilian governments.
Each of the coups over the last three years has also been driven by a specific set of domestic factors that demonstrate the agency of African political and military leaders.
In Mali, the background to the coup included an influx of extremist forces following the collapse of the Libyan State in 2011, manipulated local elections and mass street protests. The trigger for the coup in Niger appears to have been President Bazoum’s plans to reform the military high command and remove Gen Tchiani as well as petroleum contracts.
The discourse on France and autonomy came up subsequently. The mixed motives of recent coups are well demonstrated by the speed with which many of the new military governments have sought to replace one problematic relationship with an external ally with another. At the recent Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg July 27 and 28, 2023, leaders from Burkina Faso and Mali declared their glowing support for President’s Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
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