[Africa: Strategic Rivalries] - Challenging the Liberal-Democratic Order

While China’s expansion on the African continent dates back to the early 2000s and is primarily motivated by economic aims (conquering infrastructure markets; building outlets for Chinese products; cooperation and development), Russia’s return to the continent is motivated by a quest for strategic depth and financial windfalls. The current acceleration in the confrontation with democratic powers is also leading them to instrumentalize African partners to this end.

The renewed influence of authoritarian powers in Africa is not merely contextual or economic. It is the consequence of ongoing mutations in the political practices of new authorities who have chosen to revive the autocratic and dictatorial tradition of certain African political leaders in our recent history. The twenty-first-century updating of these repressive and violent methods serves as fertile ground for a gradual ideological alignment between Russia, China, or Iran, and their new African allies.

The narrative against colonialism and the West is a simple artifact to wield, especially since the democratic powers have not eliminated this cursed legacy (through strong political gestures and reparations). The narrative against the American unipolar order is also a simple artifact to mobilize, given American international practices at the turn of the century (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.). Nevertheless, similar to Russian and Chinese practices, this ideological narrative simply aims to divert attention from their own misdeeds and increase their own margins of maneuver and predation on their populations. This is why President Touadéra (Central African Republic) or the new juntas of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) have adopted this nationalist, masculinist, falsely Pan-African, and fully conservative ideological framework.

The Alliance of Sahel States: the Light Goes Out

Since the advent of the military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, the situation of civil society has been catastrophic. The promised political transitions have already been derailed, unsurprisingly. Indeed, March 26, 2024 was the last official day of Mali’s supposed transition, yet the "club of five colonels" (Assimi Goïta, Abdoulaye Diop, Sadio Camara, Ismaël Wagué, Modibo Koné) remains in power. Tensions are running high at the top of usurped power, between the colonels and Prime Minister Choguel Maïga. No serious observer was fooled by the supposed end of the transition, but this is a symbolic step that removes the ambiguities that these regimes feed on to maintain power. Power is, above all, personal. On May 25, 2024, it was the transitional government of Burkina Faso that voted to extend Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s term of office by five years. One cannot help but draw a parallel with the CAR, where President Touadéra, a close ally of Moscow, amended the constitution to enable him to retain power, with the invaluable political help of advisers from the Wagner Group, now renamed African Initiative.

Meanwhile, these regimes have locked down the political and media space. In Mali, the revolution began to "eat its young": it turned against its first supporters, such as "Ben le Cerveau" (Ben the Brain) of the Yèrèwolo Débout sur les Remparts movement, then against other voices of protest, gradually banning political parties and major associations. The media were gradually cut off. Imam Dicko, a highly influential religious figure on the political scene who played a part in the fall of former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in the summer of 2020, is himself being targeted as he becomes increasingly critical of power in Bamako while cultivating his supporters in Algeria. Political and media voices have been forced into exile to continue reporting in a balanced way, free from government censorship.

The most popular online figure, Henry Segbo, is an anonymous individual. Journalists, military personnel, and personalities accused of conspiracy are subject to arbitrary arrest and sometimes only trial. A case in point is Colonel Zoungrana, who was arrested by the security forces and barely released by the Burkinabé courts. This security shift is widely supported by supporters of the Traoré regime, notably the Wayiyans, and influential figures with large followings such as Ibrahima Maiga.

In Niger, the junta has been on a repressive course since it came to power in July 2023. It is holding President Bazoum without trial, as well as several of his close associates. In April 2024, it also dissolved the municipal, regional, and city councils, the local consultative bodies par excellence. Instead, personalities were appointed by decree by the junta to run these communities, most of them military or police officers. It is also proceeding to bring civil society in line, forbidding the media to cover the activities of political parties other than the junta. Journalists are under pressure and subjected to surveillance and threats. Bloggers have been arrested and brought to trial. Teachers have been suspended for criticizing the government. And the blind supporters of the junta are still on the streets, as in Mali and Burkina Faso, to ensure a popular base and carry out political communication operations.

 
The aims of the Alliance of Sahel States are to extinguish any public challenge to the juntas and ensure total control of the societies under the thumbs of these new autocrats. Moscow remains an inspiration, although there has been no shortage of African models in recent decades. The establishment of a confederation between the three countries to jointly manage security and diplomatic issues will only reinforce this phenomenon and risk increasing the geographical isolation of these societies.

Recent videos have shown cases of cannibalism by the armies of Mali and Burkina Faso, confirming a complete militia-like transformation and a total loss of moral bearings in the armed forces. Whether we like it or not, civil war is now well established.

Surenchère dans l’horreur : des vidéos récentes ont montré des cas de cannibalisme par les armées malienne et burkinabè, sous les approbations de leurs soutiens russes, confirmant une milicianisation complète et une perte totale des repères moraux des corps habillés. Qu’on le veuille ou non, la guerre civile est désormais bien établie.

The Fog of Information

This dismantling of Sahelian civil society is underpinned by the deployment over the past two years of a massive information fog, which makes it difficult to accurately monitor the situation (political, security, economic), express dissenting voices, or hold new political leaders accountable for their actions. This technique is the hallmark of authoritarian regimes, but change has been so rapid in the Sahel that it is hard not to see in it the modus operandi tried and tested by the Russians and presumably recommended to their new allies.

The press has been brought to heel, journalists silenced or forced into exile, and social networks inundated with propaganda and disinformation. Since 2022, the semantic layer of The Sahelian digital space has changed dramatically. Trolls and anonymous accounts have proliferated with a triple logic:

1. to support the propaganda and "successes" of the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS) juntas ;
2. to attack France and the West head-on over their policies, in Africa but not just in Africa, with their policy in Ukraine regularly being denounced by "Sahelian" activists ;
3. to target and attack other West African regimes accused of closeness to France.

These trolls are relatively easy to identify, but their links to "content farms" are by nature opaque and therefore difficult to characterize. They may include accounts run from Moscow, as well as accounts run locally in troll farms set up in Bamako or Ouagadougou, which means they benefit from French-speaking speakers or speakers of Sahelian languages with a command of local issues and cultural codes. Just as in France, online debate is corrupted and made impossible by this strategy of obfuscation and pressure on Twitter, but above all on Facebook and WhatsApp, which are far more widely used in this region.

Indeed, jihadist attacks are multiplying over a very wide area, which tends to create information fatigue and make it difficult to follow the reality of the fighting, but the "novelty" lies in the massacres perpetrated by Sahelian armies against civilian populations-these have exploded and are difficult to document. Journalists who take the risk of trying to document these incidents, such as Wassim Nasr, are not Sahelians and need to develop a vast network of contacts in the field who can pass on evidence (photos, videos) to them. Moreover, they are targeted by supporters of the juntas, as their work undermines the juntas’ propaganda efforts.

Several dozen massacres have been recorded since 2022, amid a kind of indifference due to the information fog that has set in. In this respect, the departure of MINUSMA from Mali has cut the UN off from its own documentation capabilities, increasing the density of this fog and the impunity of all parties to the war. Finally, this process is reinforced by all the judicial and administrative measures taken against foreign correspondents, media broadcasting rights, or international organizations, such as those recently taken against Human Rights Watch in Burkina Faso.

Instrumentalizing Pan-Africanism and Criticism of Colonialism

Authoritarian powers such as Russia, China, and Iran, as well as other powers wishing to assert themselves on the continent such as Turkey and Qatar use interference and propaganda levers to instrumentalize protests against Western democracies. Having clearly understood that the populations of many African countries are currently seeking answers to their own challenges in the failings and errors of the West, they produce simple narratives and attempt to shape the ideological narratives of the moment to their own advantage.

Pan-Africanism and the critique of colonialism are largely instrumentalized for this purpose. The relative failure of five decades of development aid from the West, the perceived injustice in the management of global warming, the impression that jihadism is a phenomenon exogenous to African societies (which it is not), the perversion of democratic norms by local potentates, unbalanced economic relations with Europe, weak international solidarity (cf. the COVID-19 crisis), and the fear of the imposition of "exogenous" social values are all factors that have built up resentment, a search for dignity, and a retreat into identity in certain sections of today’s African societies. In this context, Pan-Africanism, religion, and sovereignty provide the crucible for ideologies of identity reaffirmation, more or less radical (such as Kemitism), more or less nationalist (Mali Kura, Senegal), and more or less religious or cultural (the Manssah project).

This manipulation aims to denounce, in principle and in essence, the political, economic, or cultural relations between African and Western countries, perverting in the process the idea of democracy and justifying African forms that are often mere masks for dictatorship. It is a strategy of expulsion and denial of access to the West through skillfully orchestrated propaganda that exploits European political vulnerabilities under the guise of scientific legitimacy. The critique does not dwell on the colonial and authoritarian policies of Russia, within and around its federation; of China, within and around its "empire"; or of Iran, for example vis-à-vis the Kurdish, Baloch, Afghan, Iraqi, or Syrian populations.

This distortion of Pan-African or colonialism-related discourse not only delegitimizes their authors but also tends to undermine African intellectuals and scientists who are legitimately working on these issues.

Consolidating an Axis to Support the "Multipolar Order"

Like the Central African Republic before it, the Alliance of Sahel States is a laboratory for studying Russian interference. But Russia is not the only country involved-China, Iran, Turkey, Qatar, and the UAE are just some of the nations working to establish their own influence on the continent, exploiting the vein of anti-Western, anti-democratic, and anti-European criticism. This is the nature of international relations.

Russia, China, and Iran are now seeking to consolidate an anti-democratic axis on the continent and exploit the sentiment of mistrust toward Western countries to gain "market shares" of cooperation and benefit from the profound political and social changes on the continent that promote autocratic governance. At a time when more than half of West Africans want their countries to be governed more democratically, promoters of autocracy, "strong men," and a return to "traditional values" are becoming increasingly vocal.

The current context of competition and confrontation between Western democracies and authoritarian powers is gradually leading to alignments and an inevitable logic of "camps". Russia’s war in Ukraine is largely supported by Iran and now by China, both militarily and economically. Iran’s revolutionary expansionist policy in the Middle East, which has made it subject to sanctions and pressure from the international community, has been buttressed by Russian and Chinese support for the Iranian economy. Although these nations have their own distinct interests, there are structural convergences, and an axis is consolidating against NATO, against a legal and democratic international order, and in favor of a multipolar world order.

This new geography of the African continent is redrawing alliance games that are structurally modifying the great powers’ strategic depth. In the space of two decades, jihadism and authoritarian backsliding have severely limited Western democracies’ room for maneuver on the African continent-influence has been reduced or transformed, areas of presence have shrunk, and risks for nationals and companies have increased. The question of the relevance or legitimacy of permanent French military bases is a recurring theme in both French and West African debates. Conversely, authoritarian powers are increasingly setting up strategic bases (the Chinese military base in Djibouti; the Russian military base project in the CAR; the Russian maritime access project in Sudan) without raising major questions. Diplomatic support from Russia’s allies in Africa, China and Iran, has intensified.

This political change is a source of tension, rivalry, and violence. It is instrumentalized and plays into the hands of the great powers, but contrary to the Pan-African ideal, it contributes to the disintegration of the timid political and diplomatic solidarity that existed on the continent. ECOWAS has regressed by several decades, and the AU seems paralyzed by recent developments. Tensions are running high between African nations in all regions of the continent, and, as always, it is the populations who are the first victims.

This dynamic is indeed the result of an ideological and strategic rivalry between two political models and values, driven by actors who have seized power against parts of their populations. This is not to essentialize African populations; on the contrary, the political and economic inclusion of their diversity used to be a challenge, and today, it is a structural issue for maintaining the unity of these countries, as repressed minorities and identities are more likely to take up arms. It is also a fundamental dynamic of the tensions that are appearing between African countries themselves, some of which are choosing to remain within a liberal and "democratic" framework.

It is imperative to understand this, as these dynamics will be the driving force behind increased violence in the decades to come.

Copyright image : Ousmane MAKAVELI / AFP
Colonel Assimi Goïta and Guinea’s interim president, Mamady Doumbouya, in Bamako, Mali, on September 22, 2022.