Towards a new Cold War in Africa?

On 17 February, after months of rising tensions with the military authorities in Bamako, which had seen the expulsion of the French ambassador to Mali, President Macron announced that France and the EU would be withdrawing their forces from the country and that the centre of European operations in the region would shift to Niger.

“The withdrawal of French and other European forces from Mali will reduce the capacity both of the Malian military – with whom they were working closely – and the overall strength of the military response to jihadist and other violence in the Sahel,” says Paul Melly, a consulting fellow on the Africa Programme at think-tank Chatham House.

For Morten Bøås, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, the consequences go even further. “The end of France’s military engagement in Mali could represent a huge turning point in the history of Paris’ relationship with former African colonies, with serious consequences not only for regional security, but also for Europe and for France’s world power status,” he says.

Apart from the jihadist leaders, Bøås sees only losers in the conflict: “Mali is losing... France is losing. How can France, whose world power status very much relies on its position in West Africa, afford to lose Mali, and possibly Burkina Faso?”

A large bone of contention between France, other Western powers and Ecowas, on one side, and the government of Mali on the other has been the presence of the Wagner Group in the country. A private military company already operating in Sudan, the Central African

Republic, Madagascar, Libya and Mozambique, Wagner’s ownership is shrouded in mystery, but it is reputed to be owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It is believed by some to be a front organisation for Russia’s Ministry of Defence, and therefore constitutes a security concern for Western powers at a time of growing tension with Russia.

Despite the transitional government’s denial of Russian involvement in the country, Ecowas leaders expressed concern at the “deployment of private security agents in Mali with its potentially destabilising impact on the West Africa region”, in their 9 January sanctions declaration.

But the Malian junta’s plan appears to be to use the Russian group rather than the French to restore security in the country, and reports indicate that hundreds of Wagner Group mercenaries have already arrived, some of them brought in by Russian military transport planes.

“The Sahel crisis has become a part of what we may call a Cold War,” says Bøås. “Parts of Africa could be in for a rocky ride.”