The rationale for the Niger Coup.

In the era of American unipolarity, the states of Africa were exposed to the West. Poor, desperate, and unstable, many African nations were forced to rely on their former colonial overlords as well as the US, for various forms of assistance.

This was especially true during the ‘war on terror’ era, when Islamic insurgencies threatened the security of their populations. French and US Special Forces would be deployed to fight terrorists in West African States, for example in a horrific kidnapping in a hotel in Mali in 2015.

However, this assistance, be it financial or military, came at the cost of requiring that African states fulfill the ideological terms and conditions of the West – a form of neocolonialism.

The world has changed, though.

The war-on-terror context is over, and instead we now live in a geopolitical environment dictated by sharp competition between powerful countries – primarily the US and its allies against rivals such as China and Russia.

This environment means that African states now have other “options” to choose from for assistance, which allows them to maximise their own political autonomy and space rather than fulfilling the ideological conditions of another.

For example, African states reportedly increasingly use the Wagner Group for security rather than Western assistance, while China’s Belt and Road initiative also means African states can no longer be exploited by organisations such as the IMF.