President Donald Trump hosted talks with the presidents of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal at the White House July 9 to discuss what U.S. officials called “incredible commercial opportunities.” In reality, the U.S. capitalist rulers are seeking to corner the market on the resources of the five semicolonial countries and to push back the influence of Beijing and Moscow.
The five West African nations whose governments met with Trump have abundant deposits of oil, gas, gold and iron ore, as well as rare earth minerals. During the talks, Gabon President Brice Oligui Nguema urged Trump to facilitate U.S. investment in his country, which holds a quarter of the world’s known reserves of manganese, key in the production of batteries and stainless steel.
The meeting came on the heels of Washington brokering a tentative deal June 20 to tamp down the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo between its military and militia forces backed by the government in Rwanda. That agreement is aimed at spreading Washington’s reach in the country of 100 million people.
Under its terms, the Democratic Republic of Congo will expand U.S. “investment derived from regional critical mineral[s]” and boost links with Washington. The DRC has the earth’s largest reserves of cobalt, which is critical in the production of lithium-ion batteries and other civilian and military uses.
Despite the plentiful resources in West Africa, working people there face miserable conditions. In Liberia less than 10% of the population has access to electricity. The under 5 mortality rate is 93 per 1,000 live births, one of the worst in the world. Cholera, diarrhea and respiratory infections are the main cause of these deaths — all treatable conditions.
Trump also used the meeting to urge the governments he spoke with to agree to provide detention centers on their soil to hold immigrants Washington is looking to deport.
As the crisis of capitalism deepens, ruling powers worldwide are stepping up competition with their rivals, building up their militaries and trying to deal damage to those who stand in their way. Africa is an increasingly important field of battle.
China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest trader with African nations in 2009. Chinese businesses export manufactured goods to the continent and import raw materials. Beijing has also drawn several African governments closer into its orbit through its Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure projects. This has sharply increased the debt these regimes owe to China’s state-owned banks, which fund the projects.
As Washington began promoting tariffs to benefit U.S. capitalists, Beijing announced last month it was halting import duties on nearly all the African nations it trades with.
French rulers’ weakened sway
Washington’s moves to advance its reach in West Africa come in the wake of the rupturing of decadeslong military ties between the French rulers and their former colonies across the region.
In a number of these countries, military dictatorships have emerged from recent coups. These regimes are critical of imperialist domination of their countries.
In the course of an upswing of Islamist terror attacks that has fed wider regional instability, governments in Burkina Faso, Chad, Ivory Coast, Mali and Niger have told Paris to withdraw its forces.
Moscow has tried to take advantage of these shifts to expand its influence, replacing the French forces with their own paramilitaries. The Wagner Group mercenaries, now run directly by the Russian military, have been welcomed by the rulers in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to help prop up their rule and to try to push back the Islamists’ offensive.
Paris will complete the withdrawal of its military forces from Senegal by the end of this year. In April the capitalist rulers there hosted African Lion 25, the U.S. Africa Command-led military exercises, along with the governments of Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia. Washington has small military bases in Senegal and Gabon, and military facilities in Mauritania.