On Wednesday, soldiers of the presidential guard overthrew Niger’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and replaced him with a military general, Abdourahmane Tchiani. Niger gained independence from France in 1960, and after a series of upheavals, the country established its current democracy in 2011. Bazoum was the first elected leader since then to succeed another in a peaceful democratic transfer of power. Niger is a key player in the struggle to establish democracy in Africa, and Bazoum’s overthrow is part of that larger story.
Niger is a landlocked country about twice the size of Texas in the center of the Sahel region in Africa, a dry grassland region that crosses the continent from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The Sahel sits below the Sahara and above the tropical Sudanian savanna. That region is being hit terribly hard by climate change, as temperatures are rising there faster than anywhere else in the world, making the desert push into the grasslands. The United Nations estimates Niger loses almost 250,000 acres of arable land each year.
That region has also been plagued by violent Islamic groups, and strongmen promising to restore order have launched successful coups in the countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, which are Niger’s neighbors. (When Vice President Kamala Harris went to Ghana in March, her visit was partly to shore up democracy in that country, which is on the edge of the Sahel region and under pressure from militants in Sahel countries.)
While Niger’s people are some of the poorest in the world, the country’s resources are immensely valuable. Niger has oil and, more strikingly, produces 7% of all the uranium in the world. It also has the fastest population growth in the world, with more than half the population under 15. Noting that young people are vulnerable to radicalization, the U.S. last year said that “helping Niger to become an increasingly capable partner against regional threats is a critical goal.”
Nigerien forces have worked alongside France and the U.S. to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, and both France and the U.S. have troops stationed in Niger: France has about 1,500, and the U.S. has about 1,100. In 2022 the U.S. State Department described Niger as “strategically important as a linchpin for stability in the Sahel as well as a reliable counterterrorism partner against ISIS,…Boko Haram,…[and] other regional violent extremist organizations.”
In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Niger, where he announced a $150 million humanitarian aid package to the Sahel region, bringing the year’s total aid from the U.S. to $233 million. "Niger is a young democracy in a challenging part of the world," Blinken told reporters. "But it remains true to the values we share. Niger has been quick to defend the democratic values under threat in neighboring countries."
During that visit, Niger's foreign minister said that Niger would uphold democratic values to combat extremists. "We need to show that democracy is the only way to defeat terrorism," he said.
Russia’s mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group troops have also been active in the region, working on the side of those overthrowing the governments in Mali and Burkina Faso by mercilessly crushing their opponents. In exchange, they extract highly valuable resources.
While it is not clear that the Wagner Group was involved in the government overthrow in Niger—the French newspaper Le Monde says there are no obvious signs of Russian involvement—some of the militants have been waving Russian flags, and Prigozhin yesterday took credit for the coup.
“This shows the effectiveness of Wagner,” Prigozhin said on social media. “A thousand Wagner fighters are able to restore order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the civilian population of states.” This boast could well just be Prigozhin trying to rebuild his brand after his march on Moscow, but both Mali and Burkina Faso have turned toward Moscow after the coups there, and there is reason to think the same could happen in Niger.
Certainly, as their war in Ukraine goes poorly, it seems as if Russian leaders are throwing more of their weight into Africa. Putin has recently torn up the agreement that enabled Ukraine to export 35 million tons of grain in the past year, at least half of it to the developing world. He has added new mines to the Black Sea and has begun to bomb Ukraine’s grain-exporting ports, including the major port of Odesa, destroying 60,000 tons of grain stored there for export.
At a Russia-Africa summit held in St.Petersburg over the past two days between Russia and the leaders of 17 African countries, Russian president Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would export free grain to African countries to make up the difference. But Gyude Moore, senior policy fellow at the Centre for Global Development, told an Al Jazeera reporter that the amount he has offered is “too small in terms of the need.” It is also notable that African attendance at this summit is much smaller than at the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019, when 43 African leaders attended, suggesting that the continent as a whole is not tilting toward Russia.
In New Zealand yesterday, where he said the “door is open” for New Zealand and other nations to join AUKUS, the new security pact between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, Blinken noted that Russia is responsible for cutting off food to Africa and pointed out that the U.S. donates about half of the budget of the World Food Program while Russia contributes about .02%.
“So that gives you some idea of who’s the solution and who’s the problem,” he said. He suggested that Russia’s attack on grain headed for Africa “sends a very clear message, and I think it’s a message that is falling on very, very critical and concerned ears in Africa and throughout the developing world. My expectation would be that Russia will hear this clearly from our African partners when they meet.” “[T]hey know exactly who’s to blame for this current situation.”
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres condemned “in the strongest terms” the attempt to seize power by force and called for those involved “to exercise restraint and to ensure the protection of constitutional order.” “We strongly condemn any effort to detain or subvert the functioning of Niger’s democratically elected government, led by President Bazoum,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said. A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council added: “An unconstitutional seizure of power puts at grave risk our continued security cooperation with the government of Niger.”
Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told the Associated Press that the mutiny was a “nightmare scenario for Western powers who had betted on Bazoum and Niger as new security anchor for the Sahel.”
Still, Laessing added, “It remains to be seen whether this is the last word. Parts of the army are probably still loyal to Bazoum. They benefited much from equipment and training as part of foreign military assistance.” People in the streets protested the takeover, with one telling a reporter: “We are here to show the people that we are not happy about this movement going on, just to show these military people that they can’t just take the power like this…. We are a democratic country, we support democracy and we don’t need this kind of movement.”
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Notes:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mutinous-soldiers-claim-overthrown-nigers-president-rcna96574
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66339528
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/ICS_AF_Niger_Public.pdf
https://www.politico.eu/article/niger-coup-leave-france-us-exposed-west-africa/
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/whats-ahead-for-the-wagner-group-in-africa-and-the-middle-east/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/27/blinken-new-zealand-aukus-00108455
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-africa-summit-vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-wagner-group/
https://apnews.com/article/niger-tensions-presidential-guard-96f8f63b838af5467d4c95ba7b998b32
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