Niger, stolen billions and the uranium-fuelled lights of Paris
This story is about vast quantities of uranium, stealing squillions of dollars, how to screw desperately poor people and what an outstanding job the mainstream media does in keeping us all blithely ignorant of this.
The French are at it again. The Americans are at it again. The BBC is at it again. I just read a lengthy article in the BBC this week – “Three military-run states leave West African bloc” – about West African countries Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger making good on their threat to leave the French-dominated regional bloc ECOWAS. According to the BBC it was because they wouldn’t “return” to democratic rule. The article left you little wiser about the root causes of the momentous events that are playing out in the Sahel (the semi-arid region that spans the continent south of the Sahara). I think I can help. I will focus on just one of these countries, Niger. I closely followed the coup there in 2023 and it’s a gob-smacking story.
Poor people vs greedy people
France is being driven out of country after country in Africa.
Unbelievably, there was no reference to France in the entire BBC article this week and yet the reason the military are in power today is because the French and the local elites did such an amazing job at bleeding the uranium-rich country dry that hundreds of thousands of Nigeriens hit the streets in support of the military. [Note: Niger’s citizens are Nigeriens and live to the north of Nigeria whose citizens are Nigerians].
When the coup happened in 2023 Le Monde at least had the decency to run a story, “Junta is fueled by anger against a 'sick democracy'. “The coup leaders are capitalizing on the mounting resentment amongst Nigeriens over the previous government’s nepotism, corruption and erosion of freedoms,” Le Monde said. That’s an understatement.
France is unique in that 70% of its electricity is generated by nuclear reactors. Until last year, nearly one third of the uranium that produces this vast quantity of electricity came from Niger. So lucrative is this business that the French make billions of euros a year selling electricity to other countries in Europe – $USD11.1B in 2022 alone. All they had to do in Niger was provide the military muscle to keep the elites in control, and as long as the political class got their cut and had apartments in Paris, life was ooh là là for tous les amis.
Meanwhile, Niger is amongst the 10 poorest counties in the world. Half the population live in extreme poverty. Food insecurity is high and while Paris is the City of Uranium-Fuelled Light, over 80% of the Nigerien population have no access to electricity and over 80% of children don’t get to finish secondary school. So much for over a century of French paternal colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Reading the mainstream media you would have learnt none of this. We got shovelled endless quotes from Macron and the Americans about “restoring the constitutionally-elected President”.
The French Ambassador Sylvain Itte petulantly refused to comply when he was given his marching orders and spent weeks holed up in the embassy in Niamey whining about the cruel deprivations of having to ration the Moët et fromage.
Over 1000 French troops and 1500 Americans who ran drone armies (we’ll get to that shortly) spent months with one finger on the trigger. France threatened to invade. Regional heavyweight Nigeria to the south cut off electricity, blockades were put in place, sanctions imposed, assets frozen, and the French-dominated ECOWAS, a community of 15 regional francophone countries, also threatened to invade to restore President Mohamed Bazoum and “constitutional order”. A bit rich if you ask me, as several of the countries are not exactly pillars in the temple of democracy.
I could go on but … anyway, they all blinked and the French Ambassador left the country as did the French and US troops some months later, to the relief of all sorts of people, not least the Touareg, part of the ethnic Berber people who span the Sahel.
The Touareg have lived in the Sahel for 1,000 years. They are not “terrorists”.
The US had spent $100 million building their huge base near Agadez which handled an armada of killer drones, including General Atomics MQ-9 Reapers. Russians and Nigerien troops now occupy the base and continue the fight against Islamist insurgents.
I watched rather depressing footage a couple of years ago of Touareg dodging US and French killer drones which commanded the skies over their territory to ensure Western control of the uranium resource and that the precious water in the area was fully available to the mining operations.
Needless to say, no proceeds of the uranium mining were shared with these people – but there are impressive mansions in the capital Niamey 1000km away and the French nuclear fuel giant Orano has more money than you could poke a Geiger counter at.
The Touareg, who have called this area home for over a millennium, are swept up in the catch-all label “Islamist terrorists” which certainly applies to groups such as ISIS-Sahel, Boko Haram and al-Qa'ida affiliates – whose impact in the region exploded when the Americans and Europeans overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi and ushered in 14 years (and counting) of utter chaos, cratering incomes, insecurity and all-round deprivation.
USAFRICOM, the American military command in the region, calls all this mayhem “countering malign actors and transnational threats, responding to crises, strengthening African security forces, and supporting U.S. Government efforts in Africa to advance U.S. national interests.” Not for nothing the Nigerien government is on permanent alert to counter US influence and regime change campaigns – which partly explains their tilt towards Russia and China.
The French and the rest have continued to refuse to recognise the new government which In November last year finally seized control of the mines. Minister of Mines Colonel Abarchi Ousmane:
"The French state, through its head of state, has declared that it does not recognise 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?" he said.
I’m not a fan of military – or any other form – of dictatorship. We should all encourage genuinely representative government, but outlets like the BBC and all the rest, should tell the real stories of countries like Niger and apply equal heat to all of the Western buddy dictatorships and criminal warlords like Netanyahu, Bin Salman and co.
Gaza: the mainstream media’s whitewashing of Western violence is a crime.
Gaza is happening in part because our mainstream media is variously gutless, complicit, hypocritical and wishy-washy when confronted by vast ongoing US, Israeli and European criminality. The same applies to their refusal to hold the Saudis, the Brits and the Americans accountable for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq,Yemen and Afghanistan.
I would like to see Nigeriens be able to turn off an electric light at night and go to bed safe, well-fed, well-educated and part of a vibrant genuinely democratic society.
So let’s just say: good luck to the people of the Sahel and their efforts to drive out the French and Americans. May the new rulers prove themselves better than the last, and for god’s sake let’s read less of the mainstream media until they reform themselves!
EUGENE DOYLE
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.
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