 In January 2020, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, convened a summit of the G5 Sahel Alliance. That's five French-African allies in the Sahel region of Africa made up of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. He convened this in the small French city of Pau. The purpose of this summit was to discuss the French-led war on terror combating the rise of Islamist groups in the region. Now already, by this stage, you might be wondering why are African leaders flying thousands of miles to sit in a city in the Pyrenees and listen to Emmanuel Macron of all people tell them how to defend their countries. The short answer, and I guess the summary of this lead-off, is imperialism. Every single one of these five members of the Alliance is a former colony of France. The reason I wanted to begin with this little fact is because at this summit, Emmanuel Macron, who has a wonderful habit for grand phrases, declared that they were going to intensify the French military operation in the Sahel called Operation Bacani. This would provide, in his words, spectacular results. I have to say that his prediction was much more correct than he ever could have imagined. Today, the three most important countries in the frontier of this conflict, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, those three countries have experienced five coups. The French forces and French ambassadors have been kicked out of all three countries now. And all three are beginning a turn towards Russia. The balance of forces has been completely overturned in this region. But how and why has this dramatic reversal taken place? What is the nature of these new regimes? And what does it mean for the future of the Sahel and for the African continent as a whole? And so the first point that I want to make is the role of imperialism, the nature and the role of imperialism, specifically in relation to West Africa, although of course there's a general point to be made here. And that point is that it's important to recognize that this entire region has been dramatically held back and held down by imperialism in every sense for decades. In fact, for more than a century in many cases, France and Britain alone colonized 95% of the African continent. By account that I tried to do in my research, France colonized 29 African countries. If you include countries like Madagascar and islands in the Indian Ocean like Mauritius. That could be wrong. It could be more than that. And unfortunately, the colonization of Africa deserves its own talk. I don't have time to do that. But the one point I want to bring out from this is when the European powers colonized these countries, often they destroyed what already existed without replacing it with very much. Niger and Mali were left by the French as effectively just a military outpost near the Sahara next to no economic development whatsoever. But I'm going to skip ahead to the year 1960. And the reason I want to skip so far ahead is because that's when Charles de Gaulle, president of France at that time, announced the independence of 14 African countries. Why did he do this? Comrades here who are familiar with French history would know that Charles de Gaulle came to power in a coup essentially in 1958. That coup was started by French officers in Algeria who were fighting the bloody Algerian war in order to prevent Algerian independence. And yet two years later, this protector of French imperialism unilaterally declares independence for 14 countries. Why is that? Well, the explanation is in the huge push for independence and waves of revolutions that took place in the post-war period. French imperialism itself had first of all suffered a humiliating defeat in what is now Vietnam and was bogged down in the colonial war against the Algerian people to crush the Algerian resistance. And many French capitalists with interests in Africa became very, very worried that if revolution would spread to the rest of their African colonies, that their businesses, their interests would be destroyed in the course of the revolution and they might lose everything. The importance of Africa to France cannot, or French imperialism I should say, cannot be overstated. In 1947, I mean incidentally I don't really have time to go into this, but Africa is what saved so-called free France during the Second World War. France was taken over by the Nazis in the Vichy regime and so de Gaulle and the free French actually base themselves in Africa which by my count is neither French nor free at this time. But in 1947 after they'd won the war, de Gaulle recognised that for us in the world as it is and as it will be to lose Francophone Africa would be a reduction that could cost us even our independence. To guard it, to make it live is to stay great and as a consequence to stay free. What he was referring to is the rise of the Soviet Union and the USA as the two major world powers. French imperialism didn't feel like it had the strength on its own to compete with that and so it pushed on the one hand towards European integration. The Schumann Declaration takes place in the same year. Again, don't have time to go into that. And a push to the south to retain its African colonies. But the most sensible and farsighted wing of the French ruling class including socialists like François Mitterrand drew the conclusion they could not possibly hold on to these colonies by force. If they tried to do in the rest of Africa what they did in Algeria they would simply suffer humiliating defeat and those former colonies would enter into the American or Soviet sphere of influence. What they put forward was a plan to grant formal independence to these colonies without losing any of the substantive content of colonial oppression. Hold on to the resources, hold on to absolute control whilst also gaining a diplomatic block they could rest on in things like the United Nations. And so this is why de Gaulle, the representative of French imperialism suddenly becomes the liberator of the African colonies. But the sting in the tail was when they agreed this formal independence they forced or they used many ways to induce the leaders of these countries to sign up to what they referred to as cooperation agreements. Independence was to go hand in hand with cooperation. The imperialists explained that in the modern world a single nation African or otherwise can't survive, otherwise they'll be swallowed up by the greater powers. That's why we all need to stick together as a nice family, a community they called it in order to protect and develop each other. And so this is the form the development took. First of all, upon independence the whole of Africa was balkanised by the European powers including France, not only France. West Africa was carved up into a number of arbitrary artificial weak states. To give you an example, Burkina Faso has 60 ethnic groups in it. The main ethnic group, the Mossy, is actually less than half of the population. Many of these ethnic groups actually straddle a number of national boundaries and cross over these boundaries irrespective of the wish of the state. And at the same time, Burkina Faso has always been very closely linked economically with the Ivory Coast. When they were all just one big French colony, Burkina Faso was treated effectively as a cheap labour reserve for plantations in the Ivory Coast which because of its coastal position it was more commercially viable. All of a sudden upon independence that's cut off. So the Burkina Biaconomy which had been left almost entirely undeveloped is all of a sudden supposed to maintain its own state apparatus which is a finished recipe for indebtedness and independence. That was the point by the way, that wasn't an accident. Cameroon has 200 different languages in it. These are not natural borders as the imperialists in Europe would talk about. Just to give you one more example, Niger and Nigeria got a different name. They sound oddly very similar. The Hauser ethnic group is the biggest ethnic group in Nigeria. It's also the biggest ethnic group in northern Nigeria. They consider themselves the same people, same language. They have a different official language and a straight line border. Why? Because they happen to be dominated by France and Britain in the past. The entire continent has been carved up like this in order to make it weak and independence. And then the French insisted that these states that didn't even exist until the night before were to negotiate with France on an individual basis. They were not to negotiate collectively on block. The content of these cooperation agreements was follows. First of all, economic cooperation. Of course, for the stability and development of the Africans of course. That was what they said anyway. The first was they were all going to have a common currency, which as we know from the euro is an incredibly progressive and egalitarian measure. The purpose of this, and actually the content of it is quite similar. First of all, the pillars of this common currency was that the CFA Franc. The CFA Franc was created in colonial times. It was created in the 1940s. It stood for Colony French d'Afrique. They kept the initials and just changed it to Communauté financier d'Afrique. So they basically did a quick net. It didn't even change the initials. Just change the name. And all of a sudden they have this common currency, which is pegged at a two to one ratio to France. The ratio was determined unilaterally by the French Treasury and the French state. That was a fixed proportion. Free movement of capital between France and its former colonies was guaranteed. Again, I would ask the question, who had all the capital in that arrangement? That effectively meant that French capital could go in and it could extract the profits with no capital controls whatsoever. It also meant that it had a guarantee of reserves. So the two central banks that were set up in Africa, one in West Africa, one in Central Africa, they had a guarantee from the French Treasury that if they ever ran out of CFA Francs, they would be immediately transferred by the French Treasury. That's very kind, except in return, they had to deposit all of their foreign exchange reserves in an account controlled by the French Treasury. So the French state controlled the money supply of 14 different African countries. Later, that was reduced to half of their foreign exchange and only recently, I think in 2021, Macron and the French Parliament announced that they didn't have to deposit any of their foreign currency exchange and they were also going to change the name to the ECO, coming from ECO whilst the regional bloc. However, the unilaterally determined ratio and the free movement of capital was to remain. The impact on this, as you can imagine, has massively held back economic development even on a capitalist basis in the region concerned. First of all, the CFA Franc was overvalued related to the Franc. What that means is imports from France were relatively cheap, whereas exports from the CFA Franc countries, not only to France but to other African countries that don't have the same currency, were too expensive. So it meant that indigenous industries could not compete with France or even their African neighbors like Nigeria, for instance. It meant the domestic industry was completely abandoned, really. It also meant that they didn't have a control over their money supply. They couldn't print money and they couldn't devalue their currency to become more competitive because the rate was fixed. So similar to what we saw in Greece under the euro, they had to carry out a process of what's called internal devaluation. That means cutting wages, austerity in order to try and maintain competitivity. The last kind of kick in the face is in 1994, France unilaterally devalued the CFA Franc by half and so overnight, all of the goods that were imported into these countries doubled in price, including staples like rice and so on. And the cost of borrowing, which was in CFA France, also increased literally overnight. This has led to a situation in which these parceled up, weak economies, all maintaining their own state apparatus with no economic independence whatsoever, went into a cycle of indebtedness. The only way that they could cover their budget deficits from year on year is to borrow, particularly from French banks, at interest. And the only way that they could raise money for things like infrastructure or internal development was, again, by borrowing money at interest. Along with this came the extremely generous development aid, a development aid which is completely linked to French finance capital and often came with strings attached. For instance, if you received a loan, first you'd have to pay it back, but also one of the conditions of the loan is that you have to use it to buy French goods or contracts with French companies. In other words, the French benefited, the French imperialists benefited twice. They benefited from getting the interest in the loan and extra profits from getting these contracts. In addition, the African state signed treaties giving France the right of first refusal over their natural resources. So, for instance, in Niger, Niger is one of the biggest uranium sources on the planet. It's the source of 30% of France's nuclear power. Power stations 30% rely on uranium from Niger and 100% of its military uranium that keeps it a nuclear armed imperialist power comes from Niger. Niger has to give France the right of first refusal. The only currently operating uranium mine in Niger is operated by a French monopoly called Orano, which is majority owned by the French state. As you can imagine, the environmental impact on neighbouring cities is immense. Higher rates of people dying from cancer. Workers who leave the mines usually tend to die in about two years. No compensation, no insurance, no health and safety put in because there is not a state strong enough to enforce it. In reality, it's up to the French state whether Orano carries out reforms or not. And you might be asking the question, well, how is this position of absolute dependence and outright naked exploitation, how has that gone on for so many decades? Don't these now independent states just legislate differently? One small reason is they have signed treaties with what's called stability clauses, meaning that if they legislate against the interests of, say, Orano in Niger, then they can be sued by the company because it's disrupted the stability of its operations. Some academics estimate that Niger takes only about 12% of the marketable value of its own uranium. But anyway, you might be wondering how has this come to pass? And the key, the cornerstone of all of this is the maintenance of political dependence. And the way they've done this is in a process within France known as La France Afrique, which is an extremely shady regime of client states. First of all, during the colonial period, a small colonial bourgeoisie, so plantation owners, indigenous plantation owners, for instance, like Felix Uffoy in the Ivory Coast, were incorporated into the French political system. He was actually elected a minister of the French government. In other words, a domestic ruling class was effectively groomed by the French imperialists to put them in power on independence. If any of the domestic leaders they thought were a bit shaky, they simply replaced them. In 1958, the leaders of Cameroon and Niger were just replaced by France. They were still under colonial control so that the new leaders would be more amenable to the cooperation treaties. They duly signed the cooperation treaties. And this wonderful family, Macron says, between France and Africa, it must be a love story. This abusive relationship, this toxic relationship, is maintained by good old-fashioned straightforward corruption, suitcases full of cash, holidays on the Cote d'Azur, mansions in the United States and so on. But in addition to that, military support. Military cooperation treaties mean that France, basically has a free hand in the whole region, not only to maintain order, internal order, which means basically intervening to depose an unfriendly government, but also to protect its national security interests, which include oil, gas and uranium, and to maintain permanent military bases. But in addition to that, not only the French military, but French mercenaries, people who fought in the Algerian war and then started basically plying their trade across the whole African continent. At one point, we talk about Wagner now, only like 10, 20 years ago, the French were actually the biggest mercenary force in Africa. And what they would do is they would hire out their services to local dictators to maintain them in power. This was all done in the name of stability. And this is a key word when we talk about imperialism. The whole, what is imperialism? Imperialism is capitalist monopolies linked to finance capital, the domination of the banks, which themselves extend their tentacles into the bourgeois state itself. Why? To maintain guaranteed super-profits and the stability for the individual capitalist state. Interestingly, Trotsky pointed out, I think in 1905, that imperialism by putting out these small forest fires by maintaining stability actually prepares the way for an even greater conflagration. And that's what we're seeing now. But this stability of local regimes amounted to basically maintaining people in power for decades. Omar Bongo, who was the father of Ali Bongo, who was recently deposed in Gabon, ruled the country from 1967 until his death in 2009, if I remember correctly. He was a major ally of La France-Afrique. Likewise, Felix of Fouet in the Ivory Coast ruled from independence in 1960 until his death in the early 90s. And whenever there was a threat of a coup or revolution against these people, often the French military would intervene directly in order to keep them in power. They did this in Chad since the 1980s. France has been fighting on behalf of the Chad dictatorship. And even in the Central African Republic, which now has fallen under Russian influence, actually as early as 2013, the French army intervened in order to support the incumbent president in the Civil War. That's the kind of protector at side of this. But what if a leader who is not amenable to French interest happens to come to power? Of course, they try to prevent that as much as possible. But what happens if they do? A great example of that is Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso, which at that point was called Upper Volta. Thomas Sankara was an anti-imperialist leader who nationalized, went all the way in the direction of socialism, nationalized great parts of the economy and industry. He served in half in order to undermine corruption. He renamed the country to Burkina Faso, which means the land of the upright people. And what's more, in terms of the African continent as a whole, he put forward a bold anti-imperialist message hinging in particular on the CFA franc but non-payment of the debt. In the summer of 1987, he appeared at an all-African summit and appealed to African leaders to join Burkina Faso in refusing to pay the debt that had been taken from the imperialists. He said, prophetically, that if Burkina Faso stands alone in refusing to pay, I will not be here for the next conference. He was not there for the next conference because in October 1917, he was assassinated by his second-hand, right-hand man, Blaise Comparé, supported by French imperialism. Blaise Comparé then ruled until 2014 when he was deposed in a revolution. So if you tow the line, you'll get support, you'll get development aid which goes straight to the state and is then distributed. This is a big part of the source of the corruption which is endemic in so-called African democracy. And, of course, when liberals like the economists write, oh, the problem isn't so corrupt, their economies don't develop because the state keeps on being so corrupt and the legal system doesn't work and politicians just pocket the cash. If only they weren't so backward, if only Africans weren't so inherently corrupt and tribal, then they would actually know how to spend their money. What we can see from this is the source of corruption in Africa is entirely foreign imperialism deliberately set up a network of corruption in which development aid is probably the central pillar which basically cuts across the development of an indigenous capitalist class. The capitalist class in Mali, for instance, is basically just the managers that French companies put on their boards and the state, the government. Many companies are actually state-owned in Mali which shows that state ownership does not equate to socialism. The reason that so many companies in capitalist Africa are state-owned is because the individual capitalists have so little capital and are so unable to compete that they have to basically use the state as a collective capitalist in order to absorb aid and extract a profit. And much of this corruption is effectively profit extraction through the looting of the state because that's the only way that the developing or non-developing capitalist class can actually gain any profit at all. Just to give you a concrete example to paint you a picture. In Mali, a German liberal capitalist research institute called the Bertelmann Stiftung Index apologies for my German whose purpose is to trace how countries are doing in terms of market democracy and market economy and democracy not a Marxist organisation. It found that in Mali there were 4,000 civil servants who never turn up to work but still draw a salary. In Burkina Faso, the only people who have access to state healthcare are civil servants. In other words, and French companies will often put minority positions on boards to local individuals. It's sharing the wealth, isn't it? They will pay a share of their profits to the Niger government in relation to uranium mining. This, of course, is all going into the pockets of their cronies who if they don't follow the line will simply be replaced by everyone else. First of all, there is an objective limit suppressing any internal capitalist development in these countries and also a constant machinery whirring away to make sure that an independent capitalist class does not exist. The next political or theoretical point I want to make about this. Actually, there's one thing I want to finish on that I talked about imperialism and how imperialism works. Another thing to point out is this policy this is an explicit policy that's been carried out by every single French government since 1960 that includes the socialist governments of Holland and the kind of La France en Marche government of Emmanuel Macron. They've all carried out the exact same policy in exactly the same manner but the socialist do it with an added gloss of hypocrisy. That's all that you get. Why is that? That comes to the nature of the state. The state is not some independent arbiter. It's not something that with goodwill, let's just have a non-corrupt state or let's have a non-imperialist state. Imperialism is not simply a policy. It's a capitalist development that stems from the objective development of capitalism itself. A state resting on bourgeois relations on capitalism will either defend the interests of its capitalism and its capitalist class or it will fall either because some stronger capitalist will dominate it or because it will be overthrown by its own capitalist class. If that capitalist nation is imperialism dominated by the monopolies and the banks then that state will carry out the interest will basically be a handmaiden of the textbook example of this as is Britain of course. Another thing I want to say about the nature of the state is what is bourgeois democracy? We know as Marxist that democracy is again not some moral idea or pure form or simply just everybody gets to vote. There are plenty of elections in Africa. There are plenty of elections in Mali before the coup. They didn't matter. They didn't make a difference. Multi-party system. There are over 200 political parties in Mali. Problem is they have absolutely no social weight usually they're individuals who get state funding to run a party and then pay activists in order to buy votes and so on. But if the ruling party doesn't like the result of the elections they can always of course just stuff it full of fake votes pay people to vote. I'll give you an example from Mali later on. How do you have bourgeois democracy? How has bourgeois democracy evolved over time? Bourgeois democracy in countries like Britain is a great example of this. Evolved along with the development of the bourgeoisie itself. The stronger the bourgeoisie itself the more it pushed for democratic reforms against the old feudal order and also established what we know as the rule of law the almighty rule of law that apparently only the west has. Why is it there's no rule of law in countries like Mali and Niger? One part of it is actually there isn't a legal system in most of the countryside. Again the BTI index said that the legal system basically only extends outside up to the limits of the capital Niame in Burkina Faso only really the roads between the capital and the Ivorian border are sufficiently maintained. There isn't actually the infrastructure or the personnel to have a functioning legal system in much of the countryside but even within the capital the judges are appointed by the state and the entire legal system basically functions as an extension of the executive. Why is that? Again, oh it's just because of corruption or it's because of tribalism or some racist nonsense. The reason is you cannot have viable bourgeois political parties who push the interest of one wing of the bourgeoisie or another. You cannot have relatively impartial but still bourgeois judges and an efficient legal system for settling of accounts between capitalist companies without an indigenous bourgeoisie. If the indigenous bourgeoisie is absolutely tiny, utterly dependent and effectively a managerial class carrying out the orders of foreign capitalism then bourgeois democracy is objectively ruled out and that's why you see in Africa either military rule or even under so-called democratic civilian rule such as the Bazoum government in Niger which after his downfall all the European press was saying, oh he was a beacon of democracy and stability. His successor and he jailed protesters for bad protests under Covid rules they arrested the opposition leader for baby smuggling. Now if he is smuggling babies, that's appalling I don't think he was smuggling babies. I think it's very coincidental that he was arrested for it before contesting an election. In other words democracy in these countries is more of a sham than bourgeois democracy everywhere else and essentially doesn't exist. What we're talking about at best is a regime of what Trotsky would describe as parliamentary bonapartism where the machinery of parliament exists, you have elections, you have different political parties but everything is dependent on the executive the party is dependent on the executive the judiciary is dependent on the executive and that is maintained by foreign imperialism you have technical advisors that are effectively ministers in African governments appointed by France. With the capitalist classes to a week and also a working class in many of these countries is a tiny minority and even smaller proportion of the population in some cases than the Russian working class in 1917 where much of the countryside to give you a brief picture of the conditions that these countries are held in by imperialism. In Niger 95% of the population works not only in agriculture in subsistence agriculture. 5 million people are semi-nomadic pastoralists like the Toreg people who also live in Mali and so even the market and the bourgeois state barely reaches into these territories the working class is either working in incredibly precarious conditions again, three quarters of the urban economy is what's called the informal economy people like tuk-tuk drivers for instance very precarious work and then of course you've got the workers working in the mines and major industries owned by foreign imperialism small working class, a very small capitalist class now here I want to introduce a concept of bonapartism, this is not a talk on bonapartism but we can't understand all the coups in this hell without talking about bonapartism military, the repressive arms of the state actually raise itself above the rest of so called civil society again above the contending classes in society and essentially rule in its own name, acquire a certain autonomy and a certain independence, not an absolute independence and what we see here is exactly that we see an example of it a different form of it in absolutism where the old nobility is weakened but the rising bourgeoisie is too weak we see it in periods of revolution and counter-revolution where the bourgeoisie are too weakened to rule directly but the working class is held back from taking power, we saw this in 1848 we saw this in the Weimar Republic in French Africa it's not exactly the same process but what we're talking about is a state in which the bourgeoisie cannot rule directly in a kind of liberal democratic fashion but nor can the working class take power partly because it's too small but it's not absolutely ruled out that the working class can take power it's also that there is currently no revolutionary party that can lead it to power. In those conditions the rise of bonapartist governments, either a parliamentary or a direct military fashion I would say is almost inevitable I think it may be a bit step too far to say it's absolutely inevitable but that's why there is such what they call a democratic deficit in these countries but this so called stability a stability maintained by the oppressor to keep the enslaved and oppressed in their state of oppression started to break down from the global capitalist crisis of 2008 first of all the financial crisis destabilized the capitalist class the recession of course weakened the imperialist powers but another impact that it had in Africa was in the course of 2006-2008 basic food staples doubled in price many of them. At the same time the ability of these states to obtain finance was shaken at least not destroyed but shaken by the global financial crisis this destabilization or this beginning of destabilization was first expressed through the Arab Spring the comrades will already be very familiar with beginning December 2010 in Tunisia where a young man set himself alight because his last means of earning a livelihood selling I think it was fruit on a store by the side of the road was removed following that you have the revolution in Egypt in 2011 and revolution spreading to Syria, Libya and so on the impact that this had on the imperialists is extremely important it's worth remembering that Tunisia had been a key French ally right up until the revolution the French had backed the western imperialists had backed the Tunisian state they backed the Mubarak regime in Egypt all of a sudden a process that they did not see coming had toppled their allies they're at risk of losing influence in the region they do a 180 so Nicolas Sarkozy who up until that point the French press had described him being on honeymoon with Gaddafi similar to Tony Blair in Britain did the same thing lots of pictures of him smiling and shaking hands on the red carpet because they were giving Gaddafi money to prevent migrants from crossing over the Mediterranean all of a sudden Nicolas Sarkozy comes out and makes a speech in which he says we have only one goal to accompany, support and help those people who have chosen liberty so having maintained their dictators in power for decades all of a sudden they were the main force for democratic change in the Middle East what that meant was supporting the moderate Islamist rebels in Syria and it meant the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya at the same time as imposing a ceasefire and incidentally in the current context it shows you what imperialist ceasefires actually mean there was an arms embargo on Libya but France having armed the Gaddafi regime before the revolution just started secretly channeling arms into the country in order to support the rebels because what did the imperialist care about UN resolutions they write them as a result the Libyan state completely collapsed after Gaddafi's killing there was no nice democratic Libya there was no peace in Libya there was outright barbarism slave markets on the coast and an injection of both weapons and fighters across the Sahara into the Sahar region but one important point that I want to make is it's not just that these arms and fighters came to Mali and started causing all this trouble they arrived on fertile ground and again it's nothing to do with religion it's not because the people of Mali or northern Mali were just waiting for some Islamic state to come and liberate them and they themselves are Islamists what happened is desertification climate change was it is removing 500 football pitches a day of arable land that meant that people who were already living on subsistence agriculture could no longer subsist they were coming into violent conflict with neighbouring nomadic pastoral groups and when these fighters arrived the actual Mali state couldn't even reach them let alone settle the conflict when these fighters arrived many of these communities actually contracted with the Islamist groups in order to provide security effectively and intervene on their side so these groups gained a foothold for no other reason than the poverty and destitution of the Mali and countryside which has been maintained by French imperialism for decades as a result of the expanding influence of these groups Francois Hollande the socialist president who was elected on a program of change announced a military operation to basically save the Mali state called Operation Serva in 2013 in 2014 this expanded to the entire Sahel region and the G5 Sahel alliance that I mentioned earlier at the start of this lead off called Operation Bikani it's the largest French military operation since the Algerian war with 1,000 French troops supplemented by I think a maximum of 15,000 U.M. peacekeepers from across Africa and Europe and interestingly this might not come as a surprise it certainly came as a surprise to French imperialism since 2013 the extent of territory held by these Islamist groups actually expanded the intervention of the French did not even halt the extension of the Islamist rebels if anything it actually encouraged it I'll go back to a point I made briefly earlier the source of all this is poverty the Economist magazine did an interview with someone who'd been a member of his Islamist group and he said they offer you a motorbike food, a wife, everything and a job basically this is a country in which you have mass unemployment and the means of getting a living are even being destroyed by climate change and by the economic crisis and so a lot of young men this is also an extremely young population but a lot of young men are turning to these groups what else? I think there is a parallel to be drawn with gang violence in cities in European countries as well added to that the corruption of the statement that many local a report found that many local communities actually consider when asked they consider the Sharia law imposed by these groups to be a better legal system than what existed before what an indictment of capitalism in these countries that the bourgeois state is considered more corrupt and less efficient than the bourgeois state it's not that these people are just died in the wall he's actually most of the people interviewed don't say anything about religion whatsoever they have to say everything is down to poverty and the collapse of the state that meant that the French came in and understood nothing about the country carried out bombing raids the de Spiegel paper or magazine in Germany carried out an expose that in 2021 French planes bombed a village celebrating a wedding and killed hundreds of people that increased anti-French sentiment in the countryside which in turn pushed more communities to actually side with the rebels over a foreign army of occupation and in the cities the workers and impoverished masses of the cities turned more and more against the French as a result of the failure to deal with the problem and the ongoing, the French army became a representation basically of the entire crisis you had protesters coming out saying France, get out and saying that I hate this government because it supports France and France is the root cause of all of my problems a naively anti-imperialist message expressing that the cause of national liberation was intrinsically linked to the social question and the transformation of social conditions but in addition to this kind of essentially a collapse going on you also have revolutionary developments taking place across the region I already mentioned the Arab Spring the Arab Spring found a powerful echo across Africa as well in 2011 you had mass protests erupting in Senegal which eventually led to the election out of power of Abdulahi Wadi and the coming to power of Makisal now Wadi would have happily just stayed in power he was actually trying to introduce a constitutional change in order to make sure that he could stay in power as a result of the mass process and the general strike he had to withdraw the reforms and actually contest the election fairly and stand down so there's an interesting point here bourgeois democracy in elections only function even remotely well when the working class strikes and basically forces the rulers out of power shows the power of the working class here also in 2014 you had a revolutionary movement protests of tens of thousands and a general strike in Burkina Faso against the regime of blaze compaure that's the person who assassinated Thomas Sankara and you also had other movements echoes of this in Togo in Gabon as well that didn't actually result in the overthrow of the regime but you can see that this is a much wider process because the conditions are all shared across the region even before the pandemic you had mass protests breaking out in democratic Niger and again Gabon that were repressed by force but now we come to a very important element in the equation another reason why what is happening is happening is that in addition to the destabilization of the old world order the stability the old ruling class not being able to rule in the same way revolutionary developments and the accumulation of a revolutionary anti-establishment sorry anti-imperialist mood across the entire continent not just West Africa also the intervention of shall we say new imperialist powers previously if an African country wanted to break away from say the CFA Franck its economy would be completely isolated it would be destabilized it couldn't get financed it was on its own it was on its own against the world it could easily be brought to heel for itself it says leaders could be assassinated but what what has happened is with the rise of Russia and China in the region in the eyes of more nationalist leaders in African states that started to pose a little bit of an alternative effectively we would argue that it's not an alternative that is going to solve the problems more imperialism is not going to solve the problems but no longer are African states dependent solely on Western imperialism and Western finance which is a major change in the situation a tipping point if you like Russian imperialism Russia basically just read what France did and copied it I mentioned that France intervened in a civil war in the Central African Republic as a result of its hypocrisy basically and weakness it sent its troops in without camp beds without mosquito spray or even nets so they didn't do very well I'll put it that way but also scandals about rapes, massacres carried out by French forces and French allied forces meant that there was a scandal in France which didn't marry very well with the hypocrisy of the French state about fighting for democracy as a result they pulled out with a tail between their legs in 2016 apparently the French suggested to the Central African Government that they should approach Russia to put forward a motion to allow arms to be imported into the country again because the government had run out of weapons it needed more weapons than it was in Bargo as a result the Wagner Company, the Mercery Company Russian Mercery Company became effectively the personal bodyguard of the president and carried on basically carried on where the French left but without the hypocrisy and worries about internal stand scandals because of the Putin regime as a result it's not just that they've achieved goodwill in return for their services they have been signed the rights for timber extraction gold mining, diamond mining all of which they channel back into Russia they're an extension of Russian imperialism although I would point out they're not a single thing I'm no defender of Russian imperialism but not a single thing that Russia has done France hasn't done ten times over Russia yet hasn't imposed a colonial currency on the Central African Republic the main reason for that is they're not yet able China is currently the main the number one trade partner of the whole of the African continent and they're actually starting to buy up uranium mining in places like Namibia the state of Niger at one point actually tried to sell mining rights to China but that was more of a negotiating tactic in order to get a better deal from the French but I'd better move on the key to this is that all of a sudden of the rivalry because of the decline of Western imperialism particularly French imperialism here the decline of French imperialism which is not just relative absolute I would say and the rise of new imperialist powers posing as a friend and an alternative it means that these countries feel at least or these governments feel that they're able actually to pivot in their direction and there they can find some development and this has all come to a head in what broke out in Mali first and foremost effectively broke down at its weakest link this is a country in which they estimated that only 40% of the territory of the country was in the control of the government at the verge of state collapse the then leader in the summer of 2020 Ibrahim Kater organised an election for March and April in the middle of the first lockdown of the COVID-19 lockdown just to make sure he won he arrested the leader of the opposition during the elections the turnout of the election was 35% but masses of people thousands of people came out to the streets of Bamako the capital in particular protesting this coup effectively as a result of this pressure the constitutional court actually offered a concession and this is a great example of how revolutions work when that process is uplifted neither concessions nor repression can stop it both actually drive it on the court withdrew it actually overturned the election results again shows what working class pressure is the only democratic force in the country but when they granted that concession the protests got larger because people thought this isn't just about election results this is about my conditions they realised we can actually win something here they encouraged them they came out, the state moved to repression soldiers shot 14 protesters but that repression made the protests even larger because people realised that we need to now fight to the finish in that context the army actually began to split along class lines there was a mutiny at the military camp of Kati which is just outside the capital soldiers started firing into the air literally drove to the palace and arrested the president immediately the result was a transitional government a power sharing agreement between civilian leaders and the military nine months later the military leader of the first coup Asimi Goita seized power in his own name in the military bonaparte state yes but we shouldn't get pulled into these hypocritical phrases about democracy, dictatorship we need to look under the surface when we study the state and politics we need to look at this class struggle underneath this bonaparte state which is a bonaparte state Cayman's power in the midst of a revolution a revolution was taking place and as Goita has taken power in order to stabilise the situation if the working class doesn't have a strong revolutionary party and is incapable of taking power in its own name in its own right then a bonaparte, some kind of bonaparte formation I would say is inevitable that's what the Goita regime represents but it's not back to business as usual channeling the anti-french sentiment of that movement first of all actually I might get the order wrong but they removed French as an official language which is relatively formal change it pushed out the French military basically cancelled Operation Bacani because they said that it wasn't helping and it even pushed out the French ambassador in other words it knows the government knows that it's leaning on a revolutionary movement which could depose it just as it deposed the original government and they've turned to Russia they've invited Wagner in to come and help them with the combat against Islamist resbels and they're trying to sign deals with Russian companies the same process that's taken place in Burkina Faso but I would say it's gone even further in Burkina Faso you have protests that erupt on the 22nd of January 2022 the day later a section of the army officers led by a colonel and this is an interesting point that colonels are not the top of the army colonels are senior commissioned officers the general staff, the generals and so on in these revolutions these coups sorry they tend to be carried out by more junior officers in the case of one even lower but I'll go on to that protests erupt a group of officers take power form what they call a committee a patriotic movement for the safeguard and restoration they criticise the government's failure to defeat the rebels but they don't kick the French out there's actually a debate within the regime about whether they should actually turn to Russia or not Domeba the leader at that point decided not the situation continues to deteriorate local communities actually start arming themselves and forming defence committees which the army actually tries to repress a scandal erupts when 11 Burkinaabe soldiers and 50 civilians are killed or kidnapped by Islamist forces in the north and a group of even more junior officers led by captain Ibrahim Traore who was based in the north end up seizing power from so we have a coup overturning another coup what is driving all this what's driving this of course is the crisis and collapse going on in Burkina Faso but there's also a revolutionary process going on these people are not necessarily conscious revolutionaries who see themselves as overthrowing capitalism they haven't overthrown capitalism but they are resting on a mood of anti-French imperialism and a recognition that they need a nationalist mood if you like they need to take control of their own destiny and the Domeba regime was overthrown precisely because it didn't satisfy that need now Traore is coming out the French military has been pushed out of Burkina Faso French ambassador has been kicked out and Traore is deliberately maybe honestly I don't know, I don't know the guy but he is leaning on the tradition of Thomas Sankara he's wearing a red beret he's cut the wages of civil servants state officials and he gave a speech which is worth quoting now Putin in order to caught the support of African nations he held a summit in which he talked about the anti-colonial struggle he talked about western colonialism he linked the war in Ukraine to the liberation struggle of African nations he's trying to pose by the way, like all new rival imperialist powers he's trying to pose as a friend who's going to give him a better deal you might not remember this but the United States actually did the same thing in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War Japanese imperialism, Japanese empire talked about Asia for the asiatics, all well and good that it specified that the only asiatics in charge of Asia would be the Japanese the Russian imperialism is using the same language but what I find particularly striking is in his speech, Captain Ibrim Trahoray says, my generation also asked me to say that because of this poverty they are forced to cross the ocean to try and reach Europe they die in the ocean but soon they will no longer have to cross because they will come to our palaces and seek their daily bread we African heads of state must stop behaving like puppets who dance every time the imperialists pull the strings glory to our peoples dignity to our peoples victory to our peoples homeland or death we shall conquer now whether he himself is a conscious revolution he is clearly, I think it's quite clear that he is explicitly resting on the tradition of Sankara the tradition of Che Guevara and the liberation struggles of the post-war period a nationalist anti-imperialist mood why? because he knows that he has the popular base both the regime in Burkina Faso and the regime in Mali have been met with popular protests of support not protests of demonstrations of support waving Russian flags burning French flags these regimes whether they necessarily mean to or not are expressing a revolutionary process that's been going on frankly since the Arab Spring under the mould of revolution has been borrowing away under the surface and is starting to come out but this has accelerated things there's a domino effect coming in because in Niger for instance it was a slightly different situation a power struggle emerges at the top Bazoum was going to sack the head of his presidential guard the head of his presidential guard who is a general turns around and arrests him in his home and announces I'm the government at the same time you have popular demonstrations of support again waving Russian flags whether that was at all what Chayini intended or not I have no idea but he has run with it and so now the French military has been pushed out of Niger and the demonstrators surrounded the French embassy when the French ambassador refused to leave protesters surrounded the embassy and blockaded it and prevented food or water from getting in until they left I would say that this movement is far out of control of anyone it's not under the control of the French imperialists certainly not under the control of Russia or China and it's not even in control of their own state we have to see where this goes Gabon is a similar situation I haven't seen any anti-French policies coming out of Gabon but I am convinced that the reason that the presidential guard moved against Alibongo was because they were worried that if they didn't an even bigger revolutionary movement would come this is what we're talking about what we're talking about is not simply Odea the end of democracy in Africa what's going to happen next we're talking about a revolutionary process an extremely complicated revolutionary process that we have to watch extremely closely finally I want to talk about what's going to happen very briefly and I apologise for going over time it's difficult to deal with an entire region satisfactorily what is going to happen following the Niger coup Ekoas which is the regional body for West Africa announced that it was going to intervene it imposed sanctions, it blockaded Niger it also said that it launched a military operation now maybe one of you can come in and tell me where that military operation is I can see no evidence that it's taken place whatsoever there's a very good reason for that part of it is actually the Nigerian state has been so weakened that I don't think the Nigerian army could even reach Niger one bourgeois politician the former director of the central bank of Nigeria said if we declare war on Niger we're declaring war on northern Nigeria because of the Hauser question he also said and I can't believe a bourgeois politician would admit this our army is not equipped to fight a war in Niger Niger is the poorest country on earth according to the UN and Nigeria considers itself a regional imperial power the natural leader of West Africa and they are incapable of fighting a war in their closest neighbour that shows the instability and the weakness of even the most powerful capitalist country in West Africa but it's not just that there's a social question here which was a huge insurrectionary movement in Nigeria in 2020 you had mass protests at a time when the government is carrying out cuts in austerity they know they launch a war against their closest neighbour against an anti-imperialist or a regime styling itself as anti-imperialist they could easily provoke a revolution movement inside Nigeria and a revolution in Nigeria completely blows the situation open it will completely transform the situation because of the size and strength of the Nigerian working class they've had their own mass demonstrations because of the arrest of opposition leaders and the same kind of constitutional jiggery pokery that I've already explained so I won't take up time going into that situation all of the capitalist regimes in West Africa are terrified that they're next and that's the worried side of it for the ruling class but on the other hand left wing political parties activists across the entire African continent are looking at this and also asking what's next Julius Malema who is the leader of the freedom fighters basically a left wing split from the ANC an African nationalist organisation but left wing issued a tweet in French saying don't disappoint us Cameroon we're watching now Julius Malema does not speak French he's had that translated in order to say to the masses of Cameroon do it go on let's continue this process so what's going to happen next France still has its economic interests are still intact in West Africa Niger hasn't kicked out Orano or anything like that but politically it is finished the whole of La France Afrique is based on the idea that the dictators or the rulers of these countries know if they get into trouble France will come in and help them well these regimes have been overturned France has been able to do absolutely nothing so the whole game just collapses as a result of that so does that mean that Russia is going to become the dominant power now this is a key question that I can't go into is Russia capable of stabilising this situation my own opinion is absolutely not capable of stabilising this situation the Wagner company is not strong enough to stabilise the whole of the Sahel it's also been weakened by the murder or the accidental death whichever you prefer of its head at the same time Russia is still fighting the Ukraine war and it doesn't have it's not as powerful as capitalist economic weight as the likes of China or even France for that matter China has economic power but does it have an interest at this stage in getting bogged down into a war in the Sahel and also does it have the military power no the point is that Western imperialism is actually still dominant in West Africa but it's on the decline it's on the retreat it does not know what to do the rising powers also don't know what to do and cannot implant their order on the situation what that multi polarity means is not progress and development for Africa I'm sorry to say it means more disorder more crisis state collapse barbarism and revolution and that's the perspective that we are looking at and working towards what is the nature of this revolution going to be I'd hope the one thing that's come apparent from my introduction is that not a single one of the task of the democratic even the bourgeois revolution have been carried out in West Africa national unification not carried out the overthrow of these arbitrary imperialist borders not carried out even the formation even capitalist development in many parts of the countryside hasn't been carried out electoral democracy hasn't been carried out establishment of the ruling law rule of law hasn't been carried out but the question I ask you is what force in Africa is capable of carrying out any of these tasks can the African bourgeoisie which barely exists and where it exists is just a managerial class under foreign imperialism can they carry out these democratic tasks of the revolution I would say our perspective must rest on the answer no it absolutely cannot who can then the peasantry which formed the majority of the population in these countries they will be a huge engine they will be the masses that can carry out this revolution but no time in history has any peasantry been able to independently overthrow capitalism the only class capable of leading this movement is the African working class the African masses as a whole in which I include the peasantry and the poor people sitting and living in the cities but led by the working class that is the key to the African revolution a revolution which we are basically on the threshold of perhaps we'll look back and say it had already begun I don't want to commit myself at this stage that's why I'm saying watch it so closely what we're looking at is a revolution the task of which is to sweep away not just to kick out the imperialists but to sweep away all of the rotten petty states of Africa all of the artificial borders and actually begin to develop the economy in a planned rational democratic way led by the working class and finally what that means is that we have to build the IMT and build the forces revolution in this country in France, in the United States, in Russia in China, in the imperialist countries because you cannot have African liberation without the overthrow of imperialism everywhere so for that reason I will conclude build the IMT, thank you