Recent cracks in some EU-Africa governmental relationships seem more than just a flash in the pan. They may instead flag deeper chasms caused by long term policy failure and a view in Africa that the EU’s international competitors might be offering better prospects.
Last week’s diplomatic fracas in Mali, which saw the expulsion of France’s ambassador to Bamako,[1] is a case in point. The extreme diplomatic measure followed an unusually aggressive comment from Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, that Mali’s present leadership is; “Illegitimate” and “out of control”. It was reminiscent of the US phenomenon of ‘suicide by cop’,[2] where the offender begs his opponents to take him down. The fact that it was the local ambassador and not Le Drian himself who had to pay the price reflects the well-known English epithet; “deputy heads must roll”.
Le Drian’s comments reflect France’s frustration at its exclusion by the transition authorities in Bamako following the overthrow of President Keita in 2020. Unlike other former colonial powers, France takes a hands-on approach with its former colonies.[3] Led by a President Macron now in pre-election mode, France had spent heavily in Mali and Keita as a means of consolidating its 21st century influence in Africa.
By 2020, though, it had become clear that France’s long-term investment, notably in troops and materiel, had failed. France had reached the end of the road, even if it still did not appear to recognise it. Mali’s seemingly never-ending battle with insurgents and bandits continued apace, recent parliamentary elections were a mess, the leader of the opposition had been kidnapped and President Keita seemed to many of his people increasingly incapable. Malians were and are beyond fed up with permanent insecurity.
The coup of 2020 replaced an ailing and apparently ineffectual president who would die shortly after.[4] The undemocratic nature of the new interim regime naturally drew the ire of formal African and international bodies, and coup leader Colonel Goïta has since been installed as interim president. Malians have newly energised hope, and some concrete signs, that he means business and can deliver improved security.[5]
France’s armed forces are well-equipped and competent. But in Mali they were constrained by strict rules of engagement and a fear of lethal disasters which made it harder to justify deployment in Africa in French pre-election times. There is always risk inherent in deploying sophisticated military equipment capable of enormous destruction and sometimes this will manifest itself as human error. The effects can be politically sapping and the French forces certainly suffered from that.[6] This is likely to explain, at least in part, why President Goïta has now turned to others to help instead.
Military contractors work in places governments prefer not to tread, often training and lending support to poorly trained local forces. In what are usually highly unstructured environments, there can be setbacks and questions about how things are going.[7] Contractors nevertheless often have, in effect, licence to be tougher than the formal forces of nation states.[8]
Wagner, the military contracting company reportedly now replacing the French forces in Mali, does not seem likely play by the same rules as the French forces. They are likely to use much less airpower and to take a tougher line on the ground with the people making Malians’ lives hell. If they do have setbacks along the way, these are unlikely to be worse than killing a dozen and a half innocent people at a wedding as French forces did last year.[9] The political judgement on the balance of risk and reward for this new strategy will rest with President Goïta, however, and no longer with President Macron.
Losing face in this way is bad enough for France. Worse, though, is the fact that events elsewhere, such as in Guinea where France-sponsored President Alpha Conde was booted out by a coup in 2021,[10] seems to be seriously reducing France’s influence across its former African colonies. This might be why France is now playing the men, Goita and Wagner, rather than the ball – the rampant insecurity Malians want kicked into the insurgent’s net.
Wagner is certainly controversial in the West and serious questions have been raised there about the company’s methods, but working in the Central African Republic (CAR) alongside crack Rwandan troops the company has for now defeated rebels and taken control of the countryside.[11] President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, a mathematician and former vice-chancellor of the University of Bangui, says he has been able to use the improved security to begin to develop services to his citizens. He credits the improvement in the CAR to his assistance from Russia, Rwanda and,[12] obliquely, Wagner.
Mali understandably wants a piece of that action. Perhaps Wagner can deliver where French forces have failed, as in the CAR? Nothing is guaranteed, of course and there is considerable risk. But to the Malian leadership it would seem ridiculous not to try this new tack.
Beyond the loss of security business in Africa, however, Western states like France have much bigger problems in Africa; not least that international initiatives like COP have often degenerated into feelgood exercises.[13] There, Western states and NGOs demand Africans hamstring their own economic development through not exploiting mineral resources, while driving economic recovery at home by actually subsidising their own fossil fuel extraction.[14] This apparent hypocrisy is now drawing the ire of even some serious Western campaigning groups and publications.[15]
The West’s ambivalent attitude to African mineral extraction sits in the longer context of African states being encouraged overs the year by the international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to develop their economies within the context of rules-based systems and democratic governance in the image of the West. But this ‘Washington Consensus’ which set the broad framework is proving fatally flawed.[16]
In the later 1980s, US President Reagan and UK Prime Minister Thatcher stressed rules-based markets regulated by strong institutions; so far so good. But to engender this there needed to be massive infrastructure development if Africa were to have its own industrial and commercial revolution.[17]
The Western investment for this simply never happened, leaving terrible conditions for genuine economic development. These include far too little infrastructure and this has led in turn to prohibitive transport and logistics costs, little cross-border planning and much else besides.
Blaming poor governance, as many in the West often do, does not begin to explain Africa’s failure to modernise.[18] Support from institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is expert and well-intended in principle, but comes in the wider context of Western governments using Africa not as an investment destination but as a recipient of charity. That, and as a means of addressing rhetorically their domestic publics’ concerns on the environment while avoiding an economic hit at home.
Meanwhile, over the same period, China took a very different route to modernity via state planning in conjunction with private investment. And investment which respects the sovereign choices of other states, at that. It is now of course a huge investor in Africa, as the West recedes. But they may not have it all their own way from now on. Nature abhors a vacuum, including of competition.
Many of today’s leading Africans remember the support they received earlier in their careers from the then-Soviet Union and other Eastern European states. Rosalie Matondo,[19] for example, was trained at Bulgaria’s National Academy of Sciences. She went on to run the re-forestation programme for the heavily forested Republic of Congo and is now the Minister for the Forest Economy there. There are many more like her. The Russia-Africa Summit in 2019 began to exploit this historical connectedness and paved the way for a number of commercial agreements. At the next summit in November 2022, consolidation seems likely to be the order of the day.[20]
African states may be entering a phase where new international partners can help them make a serious fist of doing two things they have been unable to accomplish to date. First, improving internal security in a way not seen since Tony Blair’s 2000 intervention in Sierra Leone[21] and Rwanda’s intervention in itself a few years before. Second, exploiting natural resources to the benefit of the people of each nation state. Africa certainly has both the human and mineral resources. Africans are therefore watching outliers like CAR and Mali closely to see if they might be harbringers of something good for the whole continent.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-60202343
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/10/31/police-chiefs-propose-ways-reduce-suicide-by-cop/
[4] https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220116-former-president-of-mali-ibrahim-boubacar-keita-dies-at-76
[5] https://www.theafricareport.com/172328/mali-who-really-is-assimi-goita-the-man-who-said-no-to-france/
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/world/africa/mali-wedding-french-airstrike.html
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/29/blackwater-iraq-security-contractor
[8] https://www.dw.com/en/russian-mercenaries-accused-of-rights-violations-in-central-african-republic/a-57201150
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/world/africa/mali-wedding-french-airstrike.html
[10] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2021/09/09/alpha-conde-the-president-of-guinea-is-ousted-in-a-coup
[11] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/rwanda-commits-to-further-helping-central-african-republic-restore-peace/2326189
[12] https://www.theafricareport.com/130086/car-i-have-nothing-to-hide-about-the-russians-says-president-faustin-archange-touadera/
[13] https://ukcop26.org
[14] https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2022/01/12/natural-resources-bingo/
[15] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/28/west-accused-of-climate-hypocrisy-as-emissions-dwarf-those-of-poor-countries
[16] https://www.crossfirekm.org/articles/knockin-on-africas-door-how-the-west-failed-africa-and-chinas-quest-to-become-africas-biggest-trading-partner
[17] https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2016/why-has-africa-failed-industrialize
[18]https://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/about/director/documents/AfricaintheWorldEconomy2005withMcCordandWoo-UnderstandingAfricanPoverty.pdf
[20] https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20191028/statement-2019-russia-africa-summit-and-economic-forum-0
[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_military_intervention_in_the_Sierra_Leone_Civil_War
