Alex Anfruns analyzes the resistance of the people of the Sahel region against colonial domination and for prosperity
Since the coup d'état of Colonel Assimi Goita in Mali on August 18, 2020, events in the West African region have been accelerating. That action by a group of soldiers from the Malian Army made it possible to put on the agenda a series of popular demands that had been expressed in the streets for decades. The nation has continued to denounce how France, the former colonial master, maintained its control over the destiny of the new nations under various neocolonial mechanisms, preventing their true development.
Hence, to qualify the Malian transitional government simply as a "military coup junta" reveals a Eurocentric bias and/or an active role in war propaganda. Both serve the objective of destroying sovereignty and development projects in this Sahel region, whose geographical extension reaches 3 million square kilometers and whose population is 75.9 million people.
A key element that belies Western anti-coup or anti-military junta media propaganda is the support for the current processes of the Nigerian, Burkinabe and Malian peoples. Such popular support destroys the dominant narrative, disproving the dominant view that purports to explain why people no longer trust supposedly democratic systems in Africa. Placed under the tutelage of neocolonial policies in cultural and economic matters, those democracies consolidated the "development aid " system of the Bretton Woods institutions, preventing industrialization and the satisfaction of the needs of the people, attacking the public services of the State.
This is how a reversal of values took place among the people: democracies in Africa are seen as neo-colonial regimes, while transitional governments after a coup d'état are perceived as representative of popular aspiration and will.
The AES, a bloc of African countries in resistance
The current Pan-African Revolution introduces a novelty with respect to the period of French decolonization and the generation of independences: it not only identifies and denounces the powers that destabilize the Sahel and are in fact enemies of African sovereignty, but succeeds in defeating their strategies of militarization, blockade, sanctions and blackmail, imposing a new correlation of forces.
Faced with the threat of war from France and its vassal ECOWAS member countries in August 2023, Mali and Burkina Faso announced that if war is declared against Niger, it is as if it were declared against them as well. On September 16, the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) consolidated this common defense pact. With its initiative, the AES stripped ECOWAS of its mask. The peoples of the region now see it only as one of the many tools of the neocolonial strategy in West Africa. By abandoning this organization together and irreversibly, the governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger succeeded in getting it to back down on its policy of illegal sanctions against Niger and to present itself as a victim.
On the other hand, nationalism in the Sahel states takes up again a key claim of revolutionary Pan-Africanism, forming a Confederation which would be the embryo of African unity. It also proposes a pooling of resources and development projects in the Liptako-Gourma region (triple border between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger), which can only become a reality once the common defense structure has been consolidated.
The Egyptian economist Samir Amin summed up the need to create a bloc of countries in West Africa as follows: "any attempt at a development policy within the framework of economic spaces as restricted as those that characterize the states of the region is doomed to failure, because the necessary break with the policy of giving absolute priority to extroverted and externally driven development is impossible."
Contrary to the nationalism of the historically industrialized countries in the North, which was formed from the silencing of colonial crimes and the plundering of wealth in the South, patriotic nationalism in the Sahel refers to a process of endogenous development from its own national resources and from a fair negotiation of raw materials established without pressure and freely with new partners such as Russia, Turkey or China.
On July 26, 2023, the coup d'état in Niger turned the situation completely upside down, causing nervousness and agitation in Western foreign ministries. By taking a series of decisive steps, the CNSP government consolidated the dynamic introduced by the coups d'état in Mali and Burkina Faso. The expulsion of French troops stationed in Mali (August 14, 2022) and Burkina Faso (February 22, 2023) first, of the troops of the United Nations mission MINUSMA in Mali (December 31, 2023) then of French (December 31, 2023) and American (September 15, 2024) troops in Niger, finally, is the spectacular proof that the defense of sovereignty in the Sahel are not empty words. But, in addition, the current Pan-African Revolution is identifying the enemies of the rights of African peoples, both outside and inside the country.
In December 2023, President Ibrahim Traoré warned of the class dimension of the struggle that Burkina Faso is waging simultaneously on different fronts:
"We have encountered many layers representing Burkinabe businessmen, and above all the bankers. It was in the month of August if I am not mistaken, when we wish that there be a new dynamic with permanent meetings to support the private sector. We would like to see proposals for the government to support the financial sector and to create new companies to strengthen the private sector in Burkina Faso. To date, there has been no response. I say to you, dear banker, that I am listening to you (...) I invite the employers to include in their agenda the Strategic Plan and our vision, which is endogenous development, the concept of production. Because we import a lot and we wish that as from January importers become exporters and contribute to the productive sector here. Whoever is importing rice should be prepared to invest in rice production. Too much is imported in Africa. According to statistics in Burkina Faso we will be at 100 billion in 2025. This is unacceptable."
The repeatedly expressed willingness to abandon the CFA Franc currency zone is proof of the continuity between today's challenges and that of the decolonization that could not be completed in the first decade of the 1960s. In particular, it reminds us that Guinea's achievement in abandoning the CFA Franc in the midst of French aggression and sabotage could not be repeated in the Malian experience of Modibo Keita, due to a historical setback:
"The 1967 Monetary Agreements were signed under very bad conditions. They were undeniably a brake on the experiment of socialist construction that had been carried out by the government of President Modibo Keita since 1960, because of the exceptional power of interference they conferred on France, but also and above all because of their implications for Mali's economic and financial policy."
Only a few days before being overthrown by Moussa Traoré's military coup d'état, Keita had declared that "the 1967 Agreements are a trap. We must prepare to break them." Keita was left with no time. But in the very near future, the abandonment of the CFA franc currency and the creation of a regional currency is one of the measures envisaged by the Confederation of Sahel States. Contrary to the situation which prevented the realization of monetary sovereignty in the 1960s, the existence of a bloc of three countries with a common policy on various aspects of the defense of their sovereignty is the guarantee of the success of this new wave of "Second Independences."
The anti-colonial struggle after the Independences
To get an idea of what is at stake today with the announced Federation of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger), and to understand the challenges facing the processes of defense of sovereignty, it is necessary to look into the blind spots of the African Independences of 1960. One of the ideas that have taken hold among African youth is the realization that those Independences were only nominal. The current changes of government in the region update and carry out processes of struggle for the authentic African Independence. It is the passage from the struggle against the French colonial system in its classic form, to a determined fight against the actors of neo-colonialism. It is not surprising that the hegemonic media present neocolonialism as a rhetorical element of language or a demagogic concept used by African "populist leaders". The founding fathers of African Independences already warned about its real dangers since the early 1960s.
"When the recognition of national independence becomes inevitable, the imperialists manage to empty this independence of its authentic liberation content, either by imposing onerous economic, military and technical conventions, or by installing governments at will, after prefabricated elections, or even by inventing formulas, supposedly constitutional, of multinational coexistence, to camouflage racial discrimination in favor of the colonists (...)"
The role played by Goita, Traoré and Tiani in the organization of the popular struggles and the impact of their strategic vision--made possible by their accumulation of experiences--introduce a qualitative leap in the succession of contemporary events. In the context of the "new Cold War" of the Atlantic bloc (NATO) against Russia and China, possibilities open up for the search for sovereignty as happened in the 1960s. At that time, the countries of the South were in a dynamic of struggle with a common agenda within the framework of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and the use of United Nations institutions such as UNACTD as a spokesperson for the struggle for sovereignty of the underdeveloped countries and those of the socialist bloc. Ernesto "Che" Guevara summarized certain guidelines of that incipient front of countries:
"It is inconceivable that the underdeveloped countries, which suffer the enormous losses from the deterioration of the terms of trade, which through the permanent bleeding of profit remittances have more than amortized the value of the investments of the imperialist powers, should have to face the growing burden of indebtedness and its amortization, while their most just demands are ignored."
It was in September 1973, during the 4th Summit of the MPNA in Algiers, that an Economic Declaration was promulgated, crystallizing the rise of the demands of the recently decolonized countries. That dynamic was translated into the Charter of the New International Economic Order (NIEO), signed in 1974 to "bridge the gap between the industrialized States and the Third World: stabilization of the price of raw materials and improvement of the terms of trade, strengthening development cooperation, increasing the share of the Third World in world production and international trade..." After the effects of the oil price increase imposed in 1973 by the group of countries gathered in OPEC, the countries in search of their sovereignty would receive a new aggression by the financial institutions of capitalism.
The temporary defeat of the struggle for African sovereignty
The history written by the ruling classes contributes to the oblivion of those struggles for the right to development, emphasizing their failures and relativizing the impact of neocolonialism and the brutality of their support for local reactionary forces, which at that time took the form of coups d'état, sabotage, assassinations and repression of the first African resistances. However, the awareness of this new phase of the African national liberation struggle against neocolonialism has a double advantage over that of the first years of Independence. On the one hand, the masses of the African peoples have acquired knowledge deepened in the course of decades of experience. Today, African nationalism is less fueled by bourgeois illusions of the "return to the original source" of African socialism, seen as an idealized model prior to Western colonization. Senegalese intellectual Pathé Diagne debunked that myth in these terms:
"The profoundly unequal position taken everywhere by the societies of orders and castes is one of the most impressive characteristics of the societies of the Nigerian Sudan (...) the same desire for advanced social hierarchization can be observed everywhere (...) It is these statuses that testify to the inequalities institutionalized in legislations that delimited, for each individual, his rights and his obligations."
In the countries where socialist experiences were initiated, such as Modibo Keita's Mali, imperialism raged against the bad example of that African leader, overthrowing him on November 19, 1968 and imprisoning him until his death on May 16, 1977. Shortly before the coup d'état against Keita, a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution had been created and a critical balance of the agrarian policy of the first years had been drawn up.
As for the attempts to create an "African socialism" that would recover the social and economic model prevailing before colonialism, the neo-colonial mechanisms on the one hand and the inconsistencies or complicities on the other, were enough to limit their chances of success. For different reasons, some founding fathers of the Independences underestimated the role of social classes in the new African national reality. By considering the notion of class struggle as a concept not applicable to African societies in that context, the role of complicity with the interests of the neocolonial system played early on by certain African actors may have been underestimated. On the other hand, the most radical and representative movements of the anti-colonial struggle, such as the UPC in Cameroon, the FLN in Algeria or the SAWABA in Niger, as well as revolutionary leaders such as Modibo Keita in Mali or Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Cape Verde, took it very much into account. It was precisely these leaders who were repressed with the greatest violence, being arrested, overthrown or assassinated. That secret strategy was conceived early on by French colonialism, and summarized in this way by Daniel Doustin, the colonial administrator of Yaounde (Cameroon), "France will grant independence to those who claimed it least, after having politically and militarily eliminated those who claimed it most intransigently." It was a declaration of intent that was to remain secret, and after the Independences, the former colonial power deepened its interference and support for the repression of the "enemy within" through the cooperation and defense agreements of 1960-61.
The cancellation by the ESA of the military agreements with the former colonial power and the recent signing of strategic cooperation and defense agreements with the Russian Federation allow the peoples of the Sahel to face their challenges under new conditions and to envision a future of dignity for their children, far from the prospect of exodus and recruitment into armed terrorist groups. Or as Niger's President Abdourahamane Tiani has summed it up: it is a question of transforming the Sahel region from a "zone of insecurity" into a "zone of prosperity".
This article was translated from an article originally published in Spanish on the Instituto de Formación e Investigación Social (IFIS).
Alex Anfruns is a journalist and professor, author of the book "Niger: Just another coup d'état or the Pan-African Revolution?" (1804 Books, 2024). He was editor-in-chief of the Belgian media Investig'action (2014-2019), co-author of the documentary "Palestine the besieged truth" (Catalonia, 2008) and of the collective book "Nicaragua: popular uprising or coup d'état?" (Arizona/USA, 2019). Anfruns is based in Casablanca and researches on the right to development from a pan-African perspective.
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References
1 Quoted in "Trouble and Radicalization," Modibo Keita website. Available at https://modibo-keita.site/problemes-et-radicalisation/
2 As of mid-June 2024, the distribution is as follows: 23.9 million (Mali), 28.2 million (Niger) and 23.8 million (Burkina Faso). Contrary to a certain alarmist and Malthusian reading of the population explosion forecasts, the countries of the region are sparsely populated.
3 Although their effective withdrawal, according to ECOWAS texts, can only take place one year after they have expressed their desire to leave the organization, it is a fact that the announcement by the three ESA countries has weakened the image and credibility of ECOWAS, to the point that the new government in Senegal - whose ideological orientation has been expressed by President Diomaye Faye as "left-wing Pan-Africanism" and perceived as very close to the vision of defending the sovereignty of the ESA countries - has adopted as a special mission the need to "reform ECOWAS", relegitimizing it and seeking to bring the ESA members back into its fold.
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4 Samir Amin, Blocked West Africa. Editions de Minuit, Paris 1971. Cited in Yves Benot, Indépendances africaines I. Idéologies et réalités. Editions Maspero, Paris, 1975, p.94.
5 Speech of Captain Ibrahim Traoré during the official ceremony of installation of the Presidency of the National Council of the Burkinabe Employers and of the leading bodies of the structure. Faso7TV, December 7, 2023.
6 Testimony of Amadou Seydou Traoré. Quoted in "Trouble and Radicalization," Modibo Keita website. Available at https://modibo-keita.site/problemes-et-radicalisation/
7 On May 20, 2024, a memorandum between the governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger was signed in Niamey, in view of the holding of a Summit of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), which envisages its transformation into the Confederation of Sahel States (CEA), i.e. the deepening of cooperation and common development projects between these three brotherly countries. See https://sahel-intelligence.com/34181-sahel-creation-de-la-confederation-de-lalliance-des-etats-du-sahel-aes.html
8 African Peoples' Conference, Cairo, March 1961. Quoted in Mehdi Ben Barka, The Revolutionary Option. Report to the UNFP Secretariat before the 2nd Congress, Rabat, May 1, 1962. Journal Al Mounadhil-a. (Numerical version). p.7.
9 The founding of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) took place during the 1st Summit Conference of the same name in Belgrade, at the beginning of September 1961. It was attended by 28 countries. Its immediate predecessor was the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955, which established the Ten Bandung Principles.
10 Its historic speech was delivered at the First World Conference on Trade and Development (UNACTD) on 25 March 1964 in Geneva. On the relevance of that speech, read Angel Guerra at https://rebelion.org/che-fidel-y-la-unctad/.
11 The document can be read at the following link: https://investmentpolicy.unctad.org/international-investment-agreements/treaty-files/2777/download
12 Nouvel Ordre Economique International. Definition taken from the Gresea website, Belgium.
13 Pathé Diagne. Le Pouvoir politique traditionnel en Afrique occidentale. Présence Africaine, 1967. Cited in Yves Benot, Indépendances africaines I. Idéologies et réalités. Editions Maspero, Paris, 1975, p.102.
14 The notion of "African socialism" can be equated with that of the "Third Way" popularized at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana (1947-48). In the case of the African countries, several leaders who initially emerged within the framework of the possibilities created under the colonial administration, were in contact with communist think tanks on the African continent and their parties were attached to the French Communist Party in the National Assembly. However, one of the traps of the phase of accession to Independence was to sever the ties between the RDA party and the PCF in 1955. That initial split had the effect of combating Marxist ideology on the ground. On the other hand, it encouraged those leaders to found an ideological and philosophical vision that linked contemporary liberation aspirations to the idealized existence of an "African socialism" that pre-existed colonial domination.
15 Borrel, Bouaki-Yabara, Collombat & Deltombe (dir.) Une histoire de la Françafrique. L'empire qui ne veut pas mourir. Editions du Seuil, 2023. p.301-32.
16 See link https://www.senat.fr/leg/1960-1961/i1960_1961_0222.pdf
