Granta magazine has an interesting article by some Brit who went to the CAR (he had visa and passport problems and ended up being kicked out of the country). Even though he didn't do all the investigating he wanted to, there are a lot of interesting tidbits re. Wagner. The sense I get from reading it, is that a lof of CAR citizens are perfectly realistic about the Russians and what they are there, and know full well that Wagner, for example, is just another group out to make money out of their resources. BUT... they all say stuff like "well, they at least attacked the rebels full on and pushed them well away from the capital" or "now the mines can work, because they provide security, even if they take 50% of everything, but there are jobes, we still get the other 50% and the workers don't get shot at", and more importantly: "well, if they are going to do some exploitation, at least they have their men out fighting and risking their lives, not like the French who actually never risked their troops, so at least the Russians deserve some of what they exploited us for".
If the same happens in other countries, ie. Russian troops or Wagner ACTUALLY going out and attacking rebels and fighting them head on, and having some results, it will solidify the move away from the West.
that sounds about right. The CAR is a particularly fucked country.
There definitely seems to be an attitude in modern Africa that they're gonna get exploited regardless but people could at least share the danger and not blow smoke up their asses.
If the nations of the Sahel reach out to any foreign power for assistance with its development the only logical choice to take the lead would be China and second place isn’t even close. The incompetence of the Americans can be perfectly encapsulated in the fact that the largest investment they made in a country as desperately poor as Niger was a $100M military base.
According to a one sentence line in an NYT article I added shortly after publishing (the link on Mohamed Bazoum) and agreement was reached with China to build that pipeline, but I didnt find anything about it when actually searching the name of the pipeline. I do happen to know that China built the main stadium in Niamey.
Its an interesting thing what polling there is (low quality) shows that positive attitudes towards the US and China and Russia are positively correlated, which is to say there is some evidence that Africans either have a positive view of the major non-colonial powers or they dont, and it isnt the case that they tend to favor one to the exclusion of the other.
Africa is a huge continent with a lot of needs and resources and an enormous pool of cheap labor, there is more than enough business for everyone, if they want to behave reasonably.
The whole of Africa is the new battleground for influence and/or friendly relations. It would be wonderful if you would do the same for the South. That would require more focus on whose extracting rather than war, but there are hot spots too.
Yeah I have covered Francophone W Africa the most because French influence has been collapsing and there are a lot of the sort of things I deal with, but in many ways the aspects I write about seem over for now. The situation in S Africa is pretty interesting and most people who talk about it are insane, so it would be a good area for me to write about. Will certainly keep it in mind.
Granta magazine has an interesting article by some Brit who went to the CAR (he had visa and passport problems and ended up being kicked out of the country). Even though he didn't do all the investigating he wanted to, there are a lot of interesting tidbits re. Wagner. The sense I get from reading it, is that a lof of CAR citizens are perfectly realistic about the Russians and what they are there, and know full well that Wagner, for example, is just another group out to make money out of their resources. BUT... they all say stuff like "well, they at least attacked the rebels full on and pushed them well away from the capital" or "now the mines can work, because they provide security, even if they take 50% of everything, but there are jobes, we still get the other 50% and the workers don't get shot at", and more importantly: "well, if they are going to do some exploitation, at least they have their men out fighting and risking their lives, not like the French who actually never risked their troops, so at least the Russians deserve some of what they exploited us for".
If the same happens in other countries, ie. Russian troops or Wagner ACTUALLY going out and attacking rebels and fighting them head on, and having some results, it will solidify the move away from the West.
that sounds about right. The CAR is a particularly fucked country.
There definitely seems to be an attitude in modern Africa that they're gonna get exploited regardless but people could at least share the danger and not blow smoke up their asses.
If the nations of the Sahel reach out to any foreign power for assistance with its development the only logical choice to take the lead would be China and second place isn’t even close. The incompetence of the Americans can be perfectly encapsulated in the fact that the largest investment they made in a country as desperately poor as Niger was a $100M military base.
According to a one sentence line in an NYT article I added shortly after publishing (the link on Mohamed Bazoum) and agreement was reached with China to build that pipeline, but I didnt find anything about it when actually searching the name of the pipeline. I do happen to know that China built the main stadium in Niamey.
Its an interesting thing what polling there is (low quality) shows that positive attitudes towards the US and China and Russia are positively correlated, which is to say there is some evidence that Africans either have a positive view of the major non-colonial powers or they dont, and it isnt the case that they tend to favor one to the exclusion of the other.
Africa is a huge continent with a lot of needs and resources and an enormous pool of cheap labor, there is more than enough business for everyone, if they want to behave reasonably.
Excellent summary.
The whole of Africa is the new battleground for influence and/or friendly relations. It would be wonderful if you would do the same for the South. That would require more focus on whose extracting rather than war, but there are hot spots too.
Yeah I have covered Francophone W Africa the most because French influence has been collapsing and there are a lot of the sort of things I deal with, but in many ways the aspects I write about seem over for now. The situation in S Africa is pretty interesting and most people who talk about it are insane, so it would be a good area for me to write about. Will certainly keep it in mind.
Living here, we definitely need more sanity in the Media. Hypernormalisation, for sure.