On July 26, 2023, the military-led Committee to Safeguard the Homeland (CNSP) took power in the West African state of Niger.

Immediately the burgeoning anti-French sentiment inside the country erupted and a completely new political atmosphere was created.

French troops were asked to leave the country while the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) forces present in Niger along with their drone stations departed as well at the aegis of the CNSP leaders. A widespread discussion on reclaiming the national wealth of Niger took place.

Niger has large scale deposits of uranium being the world’s eighth largest producer. For years the uranium mining inside the country has been controlled by French multi-national corporations where the real benefits of the revenues from the sale of these resources disproportionately benefited Paris.

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Niger ranking in uranium deposits (Source: Euratom Supply Agency / Statista)

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After making demands on the Orano corporation, the company has reportedly been searching for a buyer of its interests in Niger. The CNSP government has been involved in a dispute over funds owed to the country by the French-controlled firm.

For decades African states have routinely not received the proper remunerations from the sale of their natural resources on the international markets. This lack of total control over the revenues from agricultural products, minerals, metals, natural gas and petroleum has resulted in continuing mass poverty and its concomitant impacts of food deficits, healthcare crises, lack of housing and a rising national debt. In most cases the African states are forced to borrow on unfavorable terms making them susceptible to International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank restructuring programs which hamper genuine development.

Orano controls the majority stakes in the uranium mines located in the north of the arid country in West Africa. Niger has been demanding the restructuring of ownership of the mines giving the government majority interests.

Image: The open pit uranium mine at Arlit, Niger. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

In June 2024, the CNSP government took control of the output of one of the largest uranium mines in Niger. Subsequently, Orano suspended its work on other mines in which they control the majority interests.

Niger’s Minister of Mines, Col. Abarchi Ousmane, said that the hostility of the French government is a factor in the current disagreement over uranium resources. He said in an interview with the BBC that

“The French state, through its head of state, has declared that it does not recognize the current authorities in Niger. Does it seem possible to you that we, the state of Niger, would allow French companies to continue extracting our natural resources?” 

The previous government headed by President Mohamed Bazoum was a pro-western regime which did the biddings of the multinational corporations and the imperialists based in Paris and Washington. After the ascendancy of the CNSP, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), then led by the Federal Republic of Nigeria, threatened to militarily intervene to reinstall Bazoum to power.

This proposal for an invasion backed by the U.S. and France failed to gain any traction in the ECOWAS region. Later Niger along with Mali and Burkina Faso, known as the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), withdrew from ECOWAS to form their own separate regional grouping based upon anti-imperialism and Pan-Africanism.

Niger had been suspended along with Mali and Burkina Faso from ECOWAS. All three states signed the Liptako-Gourma Charter in late 2023 and have refused to rejoin ECOWAS.

The expulsion of French and U.S. military forces as well as the reconfiguration of economic control of natural resources have made the AES governments a threat to imperialism. If the process of emphasizing national and regional sovereignty along with taking control of strategic resources spreads across West Africa and other regions of the continent, the stage will be set for solidifying the already existing clauses within the AU charter which mandates greater self-reliance on the part of the individual member-states.

A report published by the Financial Times says of the situation in Niger:

“The withdrawal of Orano would be the latest confirmation of the loss of French influence in the region and the failure of its ‘Françafrique’ policy under which Paris sought to maintain influence in its former colonies. France has also withdrawn soldiers from Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years. The sales process risks being politically fraught for the French government, which owns 90 per cent of the business, with Russian and Chinese buyers said to be circling the assets. Orano in December said that it no longer controlled any of its subsidiaries in Niger and launched several international arbitration cases against the state. Orano also began legal proceedings against the junta after its offices were raided by Niger’s intelligence agency this month, leading to the arrest of a local company director.” 

In this resource-rich state of approximately 26 million people where the population is classified as one of the poorest in the world, the need for radical reconstruction is essential. If Niger can reverse the current situation, it would portend much for the entire region of West Africa and the continent as a whole.

Security Challenges Remain Paramount

The process of reversing the neo-colonial course in Niger and throughout the AES area will undoubtedly prompt efforts to destabilize and overthrow these governments. Throughout the course of the national liberation struggles and post-colonial historical processes, the imperialist states sought to build alliances with reactionary domestic forces in order to hamper the forward trajectory of the national development.

In 1987, former revolutionary Burkina Faso leader, Capt. Thomas Sankara, was overthrown and assassinated in order to halt the revolutionary transformational process. More than two decades earlier in 1966, the government of President Kwame Nkrumah of the First Republic of Ghana was overthrown by lower-ranking military officers and the police being engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

With the formation of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in early 2008, the stage has been set for even more effective means to remove governments which foster anti-imperialism and continental unity. Libya, which was led by the revolutionary Pan-Africanist leader and statesman Col. Muammar Gaddafi, was destroyed by AFRICOM and its NATO allies in 2011.

In the aftermath of the counter-revolution in Libya during 2011, destabilization and destruction has spread throughout the North and West Africa regions. Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have been negatively impacted by the rise of so-called jihadists groupings which are said to be linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The African Center for Strategic Studies in a recent report analyzed the security crisis in Niger by outlining the actions of two of the major rebel groupings, the Islamic State of the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate:

“Fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in western Niger have increased 66 percent from 793 in 2023 to 1,318 in 2024. These fatalities represent a marked increase in lethality as the number of violent events increased only marginally from 230 to 243 over the same period.

Niger’s Tillaberi Region, which borders both Burkina Faso and Mali, recorded 92 percent of the fatalities (1,212) linked to militant Islamist groups (primarily ISGS and Ansaroul Islam) in western Niger in 2024. Long focused on Ménaka in northern Mali, ISGS is now linked to roughly the same number of violent events in western Niger (145) as in northern Mali (149). By stretching its influence southward both west and east of Niamey, ISGS militants may be seeking to encircle the Nigerien capital while also gaining control over supply routes to northwest Nigeria. JNIM (likely Ansaroul Islam), meanwhile, has been expanding its violent activity in western and southwestern Niger. It was linked to 598 fatalities in 2024, a 237-percent increase over the previous year.” (See this)

These incidents of violence inside Niger are objectively assisting the imperialist efforts to reimpose western-oriented regimes in Niamey along with Burkina Faso and Mali. Niger has sought military and security assistance from the Russian Federation and Turkey.

As an independent sovereign state, the CNSP government has the right to seek intelligence and military support from Moscow and any other state which respects the rights of the people in Niger to live in peace. The security of Niger and the other AES governments are indispensable in order to rebuild this region for the benefit of the majority of the people.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

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