Although the perpetrators of the Gabon coup, which was announced on Wednesday, have not yet announced their intentions regarding France, the series of coups that took place in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were accompanied by a rejection of the continuation of French influence in these countries, with increased cooperation in return with Russia and China.
Political analysts who spoke to “Sky News Arabia” hold Paris partly responsible for these coups, enumerating the reasons for this, and its impact on its economy, expecting the continuation of the series of coups.
French reaction
- Politically, Paris’s comment has so far been conservative, pending developments and the orientations of the coup’s perpetrators. The French Prime Minister, Elisabeth Bourne, said that her country is closely following the situation in Gabon, during her speech to the Ambassadors Conference in Paris.
- Economically, there was a rapid loss, as represented by the announcement by the French mining company “Eramet”, which owns the unit “Komelog” for manganese production in Gabon, on Wednesday, that it had suspended all its operations in the country.
Subsequently, the company’s shares fell, after announcing the cessation of mining, by 4.7 percent, to 72.95 euros.
Gabon ranks third in the world in manganese production, with a production volume of 2.3 million metric tons, according to 2018 data. Thanks to this, the French mining group “Eramet” has become the second largest producer of high-quality manganese ore in the world, and operates the main “Moanda” mine through the “Komelog” company.
And if the Gabonese revolutionaries carry out a policy that rejects French influence, it will be a major blow to the French economy, which invests in manganese, and fears the repercussions of the Niger coup on its investment in uranium.
Macron’s responsibility
The Paris-based political analyst, Nizar Al-Jilidi, describes the Gabon coup as a link in the chain of the decline of French influence in Africa, citing the drop in shares of the “Eramit” company on the stock exchange immediately after the coup by 5 percent.
Al-Jalili holds French President Emmanuel Macron and the Elysee Palace a share of the responsibility for that, saying that they “insist on following the same policies in Africa that have proven useless.”
The countries where coups took place in the last two years, such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, are filled with feelings of anger from Paris, accusing it of not stopping the “draining” of their country’s wealth, and that it considers them “followers” of it, despite independence from it after the liberation movements of the last century.
‘Not the last coup’
The director of the French Center for Research and International Policy Analysis, Aqila Dabichi, links the spread of coup contagion in the French spheres of influence in West Africa to the ongoing conflict between major countries in Africa, represented by the axis of Russia and China, and the axis of Europe and the United States.
And she adds to this local reasons, such as poverty despite its richness in natural resources, election fraud, and corruption, expecting that the Gabon coup “will not be the last” on the continent.
The political analyst, Ali Musa Ali, agrees with her, saying: “The contagion of coups is spreading, and will not stop in Gabon and Niger, especially with the continued weakness of state institutions in several countries, the control of certain groups on governance, and the feeling of injustice.”
In this, he indicates that the Bongo family has been in control of power in Gabon for more than 55 years. Where the father and then his son have ruled since 1967, she “has great control over the country’s resources.”
The first coup?
As an indication of the role of the weakness of French influence in Gabon, Ali says that Gabon has witnessed long political stability since its independence from France in 1960, and has not been ruled by a military coup in its history, and has had 3 presidents rule since that time.
Gabon was subjected to several coup attempts, but it failed to change the president, including a coup attempt against President “Leon Mba,” the first president of Gabon, in 1964, but Paris confronted him.
On January 7, 2019, there was a coup attempt against President Ali Bongo, but the officers involved were arrested.
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