Treffen Sie die Sieger im afrikanischen Putschgürtel

An article from the Economist talking about the several leaders in Western Africa, primarily in the ‘Sahel’, which are led by military juntas which took power in the early 2020s (aside from Senegal). Talks how these leaders brand themselves to their country and the international community, and the reasons why they are popular with their populations. Also discusses about the tensions with ECOWAS, a group of relatively democratic countries in the same region, and also their relations with Russia, China and the West.

The west’s relations with [countries in the Sahel](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/08/01/fanatics-and-putschists-are-creating-failed-states-in-west-africa) The west’s relations with [countries in the Sahel](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/08/01/fanatics-and-putschists-are-creating-failed-states-in-west-africa) seemed to have hit rock bottom in May when Niger ordered America to withdraw its forces by September—having already booted out a French counter-terrorism mission—and welcomed Russian military advisers. Then even this bottom fell out. Last month Niger, which supplies about a quarter of Europe’s uranium, revoked the mining licence of France’s state-owned nuclear-fuel company. Many fear the country will now hand over the rights to one of the world’s biggest uranium mines to a state-owned Russian firm.

[Niger’s](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2023/09/25/why-emmanuel-macron-is-pulling-french-troops-out-of-niger) turn against the West comes amid what many in French-speaking west Africa are calling a second “independence”. It is being spurred by a new generation of nationalists who have taken power in former French colonies from [Senegal](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/03/26/senegal-proves-the-doomsayers-wrong) to Chad and the three core countries of the Sahel: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. They have done so amid strident appeals to sovereignty and autonomy, in language reminiscent of Ahmed Sekou Touré, independent Guinea’s first president, who told Charles de Gaulle in 1958: “Guinea prefers poverty in liberty to riches in slavery”. Several have strengthened ties with Russia. All want a new relationship with the West. “‘Sovereignty’ is the big word in the region these days,” says Ibrahim Yahaya of Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. “It has become almost like a religious dogma.”

Most prominent among the new nationalists are military leaders from the Sahel trio, where Western forces had been helping the previous governments battle jihadists linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The wider group includes Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Senegal’s newly elected president, and Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, Guinea’s leader since a coup in 2021. “The era of the old Africa is over,” Colonel Doumbouya told the un in New York last year. “This is the end of an unbalanced and unjust era where we had no say. It is time to take our proper place.”

The new nationalists portray themselves as the modern embodiments of the anti-colonial struggle. Colonel Doumbouya has set about rehabilitating the divisive memory of Sekou Touré, for instance by renaming Conakry’s airport after him. Burkina Faso’s 36-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who grabbed the presidency in a putsch in 2022, styles himself as the reincarnation of Thomas Sankara, a socialist leader who was assassinated in 1987.

Some scepticism is in order. Coup leaders nearly always claim to be patriots, and often turn out to be self-serving or corrupt. Abdourahmane Tchiani, the new leader of Niger, launched a putsch against a democratically elected government when he was about to be sacked as head of the presidential guard. There is no evidence that any of the new nationalists have curbed the graft they all complained about.

Demands for greater sovereignty partly reflect security concerns. Instability continues to spread across the Sahel more than a decade after France dispatched troops to Mali to put down an Islamist insurgency. With a record 11,643 fatalities linked to jihadist violence in 2023, the Sahel is now the global centre for terrorist attacks. Beginning in Mali in 2020, and followed by Burkina Faso and Niger, the Western-trained local soldiers who have seized power have blamed French troops—who numbered more than 5,000 in the region at their peak four years ago—for failing to crush the insurgents. Aggrieved local populations appear to agree.