Difficult to trust the resource nationalism of Niger’s military government

Last month, France’s majority state-owned nuclear conglomerate Orano revealed that the military government of Niger has assumed “operational control” of its Nigerien uranium mining subsidiary, Somair. Decisions made at board meetings at Somair, where the state of Niger holds a 36% stake, were “no longer being applied,” it claimed in a statement from December 4. It claimed that the Nigerian government was “placing a heavy burden on the employees and local communities” by refusing to suspend production at the mine and also not allowing the export of the produce.

In July 2023, Orano claims a group of senior army officers, led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, ousted Nigerian President Mohamed Bazoum, who was initially having trouble running Somair.

In response to the coup, the regional bloc ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Niger and suspended its membership. These included trade sanctions that brought all exports via Benin, including Somair’s uranium exports, to a halt.

In February 2024, Nigerien’s government announced that these trade restrictions would be lifted, but the country’s government chose to keep its border with Benin closed. They have also refused to recommence Somair’s uranium exports through an alternative route, and effectively ended the Orano subsidiary’s chances of commercial survival.

In June, the military government reversed the permit that its other subsidiary, Imouraren SA, held to mine the alleged largest Imouraren uranium deposit on the grounds that the French company’s development plans did not meet expectations. This is a further blow to Orano’s interests in Niger.

The apparent hostility between the French nuclear power and the Nigerien junta is not unexpected.

The land-locked African nation’s 27 million citizens should be able to make more money from its rich uranium deposits, according to Niger’s military rulers, who have voiced their disapproval of the process by which foreign companies are granted lucrative mining licences since taking over the country.

Their argument has merit.

Despite all its natural resources, Niger stands as one of the world’s poorest countries, with almost half of its population living in extreme poverty and some 13.1 percent facing severe food insecurity. One in seven Nigeriens has access to modern electricity services despite contributing to the uranium that keeps the lights on in Europe. The West African country has ranked 189th out of 193 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index for 2023-24.

The country’s abundant and enviable natural resources have obviously provided the average Nigerian with little over the years. This deep injustice can be blamed in great part on the actions of France, Niger’s former colonial authority.

Niger officially seceded from France in 1960, but it never quite put an end to French uranium mining. For more than five decades, France has been extracting uranium from Niger with the highest possible profit margins, giving the Nigerien people nothing but crumbs, using trade agreements that date back before the pre-independence era. And at times, according to Nigerien officials, the French companies do not even pay what they officially agreed for the exports.

Mahaman Laouan Gaya, a former Nigerien energy minister and the African Petroleum Producers ‘ Organization (APPO) secretary-general until 2020, for example, told the German publication DW in a 2023 interview that Niger exported uranium worth 3.5 billion euros ($3.6bn) to France in 2010 but received only 459 million euros ($480m) in return.

The military government seems to be trying to end this unfair and exploitative trade relationship that was the result of French colonial privilege, at least on the surface. Nonetheless, when you dig a bit deeper, it becomes obvious that the military government’s actions are not based solely on a desire to further the Nigerien national interest. The non-elected administration’s primary purpose in targeting Orano appears not to be to protect the nation from colonial exploitation, but to pressure France to recognise its rule.

Colonel Abarchi Ousmane, the country’s mines minister, made this clear in a recent interview with the RIA Novosti news agency.

“The French state, through its head of state, has declared that it does not recognise the current authorities in Niger”, he told the Russian outlet in November. Does it seem possible that the state of Niger would permit French companies to keep extracting our natural resources?

The military administration may be willing to let Orano continue extracting Niger’s resources, but only if the French government grants them legitimacy in the international arena (and perhaps a share of the profits), as is clear from this statement.

Alas, the military government appears to be doing the right thing, at least for the time being, but for the wrong reasons.

Nigeris have a natural right to have control over their national resources. This fundamental right should not be violated in order to ensure the political stability and long-term viability of an increasingly oppressive coup regime that is closely aligned with Russia, another self-serving imperial power that is undoubtedly eager to exploit Niger’s uranium resources.

The military administration’s apparent propensity to promote resource nationalism can genuinely benefit Niger and bring its citizens well-deserved prosperity and stability. Only if the country’s rulers stop substituting their own domestic abuse and violent oppression for the former colonial masters’ exploitation.

Indeed, there is no precedent in Africa for a seemingly nationalistic and anti-colonial leadership’s appropriation of efforts for and rhetoric of indigenousization to advance its self-serving agenda. And every time a government or leader used resource nationalism and indigenousism as a tool to consolidate power over the people to oppress them, the end result has been economic, political, and social devastation.

Take Libya, Niger’s oil-rich neighbor, for instance, which is perhaps the continent’s indigenous nation that has experienced the most prosperity.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the then-Libyan leader, renegotiated the oil price to fund a socioeconomic revolution two years after gaining control of the country in a bloodless coup in September 1969.

In March 1971, Libya and Western oil companies reached a groundbreaking agreement after intensive negotiations. The agreement resulted in an annual revenue increase of $600 million (approximately $4.6 billion today), raising the posted price of Libyan oil from $ 2.55 per barrel to $ 3.45.

Two years later, in September 1973, Libya nationalized 51% of the country’s oil companies’ assets. As a result of the pursuant windfall, per capita incomes soared in the North African country, increasing from $1, 830 in 1970 to more than $4, 000 in 1975 and becoming one of the highest in the world by 1979.

Gaddafi successfully ushered in a new era of quasi-socialist socioeconomic development, which made it possible to construct new housing, educational, and healthcare facilities, with the substantial financial resources he gained from resource nationalism and indigenization. For a while, the revolution made exceptional gains. Libyans experienced exponential improvements in living standards, literacy rates, and life expectancy.

However, the good times didn’t last, partly because Gaddafi established himself and his regime as the new oppressor of the country he had freed from Western exploitation.

Along with commissioning shiny new developments, Gaddafi unleashed a wave of oppression – &nbsp, censorship, enforced disappearances, large-scale arrests, show trials, televised public executions, and massacres – that targeted university students, intellectuals, devout Muslims, opposition groups, and political rivals.

Gaddafi quickly transformed from a nationalist hero to a feared villain due to his desire to squelch fundamental civil liberties and human rights in order to silence any critical voice. His regime’s demise in 2011 and a second civil war in Libya resulted from widespread state violence, as well as pressure from Western powers upset by cheap access to the nation’s resources.

For a moment, Gaddafi – and Libya – was winning. The nation’s wealth had reclaimed its control. The future was bright. He did it, though.

Another noteworthy example of an African nationalisation effort that ended in chaos and suffering due to a supposedly “nationalist” and “anti-colonial” leadership’s hunger for absolute power and personal enrichment occurred in Zimbabwe.

The ruling ZANU-PF party spearheaded an accelerated land reclamation initiative in 2000 to address the injustices of land appropriation that occurred during British colonial rule. About 170, 000 Black Zimbabwean families were resettled, each receiving 6 hectares (15 acres) of prime agricultural land that had previously been owned by about 4, 000 white commercial farmers.

However, ZANU-PF carried out an extremely chaotic, violent and highly politicised land reform exercise. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters were targeted, both real and merely skewed. As he had promised, Mugabe used all the state’s resources to silence opposition to his regime, not to give Zimbabwean people back what was stolen from them by colonists. In the end, Zimbabwe’s violent tactics to implement land reform and coerce Zimbabweans into voting for him led to a disastrous economic downturn, which eroded national cohesion, provoked sanctions from Western nations, and led to a devastation.

Today, seven years after the end of his rule, Zimbabwe is yet to recuperate from Mugabe’s critically needed and highly justified, but poorly and unjustly executed land redistribution endeavour.

Since 1960, that pivotal year when 17 African nations achieved independence, indigenisation and resource nationalism have always been in vogue in Africa. Many African leaders continue to pledge their support for Africans today, from Senegal to Ghana, and to promote local ownership of oil, gas, and mining operations.

Resource nationalism can in fact give African countries the motivation they need to achieve long-term prosperity and true independence. However, as events in Libya and Zimbabwe proved, efforts at nationalising resources, under the guidance of selfish leaders more concerned about their political future than the wellbeing of the nation, can prove disastrous.

Niger is now at a critical juncture. The country can truly prosper if its military government decides to pursue true resource nationalism, fulfills its many promises to the country, and establishes a new system that will allow the people to receive every penny they earn from uranium extraction and export. Niger can finally let go of the last vestiges of colonial rule and become an engine for development in Africa if indigenization and democratization and people power go hand in hand.

Regrettably, the military administration appears to be taking a different route, one that may benefit it politically in the short run but undoubtedly will harm the nation in the long run.

Source: Aljazeera