And leaves France, a three-time loser…
Another day and yet another coup in Africa.
This time it is the Niger Republic.
Not to be confused with its populous southern neighbour — the Federal Republic of Nigeria — Niger is one of eleven former French colonies in West Africa.
To those who have some knowledge of history, they will have read about the French colonialism in Africa and its unique creation of the currency — CFA Francs —which has kept most of these supposedly independent states in economic bondage till this very day.
France’s policy of meddling in the internal affairs of its former territories has led to perpetual economic and political instability.
With the exception of Senegal, nearly every French speaking in West Africa has had military coups since the 1960s.
So what has this got to do with Russia, I hear you ask?
Everything.
With Africa being the battleground between the west and Russia, it feels like deja vu all over again.
To provide a bit of history lesson to all would be readers of this piece, back when America was obsessed with Soviet Russia and was actively waging the cold war, a good number of democratic governments in Afrique were toppled with support from the CIA.
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Patrice Lumumba of Congo-Kinshasha were ousted from power. Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara was killed on the orders of the former French President — Francois Mitterand — in 1987.
And we should never forget the protracted war which engulfed Angola and Mozambique in the 1980s, which came to an end when the Cuban backed forces routed the apartheid and American supported Jonas Savimbi rebels.
The only difference being that Russia is making serious inroads in ways that would have been deemed inconceivable in the 1980s.
And we have the Wagner group to thank for that.
Vladimir Putin’s former ally who tried ousting him from power last month —Yevgeny Prigozhin — is behind the mercenaries who are disrupting the balance of power…