Africa Is a Country

Why is the US army in Niger

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Why is the US army in Niger

By
Anakwa Dwamena

Including another worrying thread of the American "war on terror" on the continent: the training of vigilantes. 

US special forces training Malian soldiers.

The Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina has written a Letter to All Kenyans. Kenyans were supposed to vote this week in a rerun of August’s presidential election, but the electoral commission postponed elections in opposition strongholds indefinitely yesterday. Here’s a taste: “In 1992, I voted for Mwai Kibaki. I was, then, a very conservative Kenyan. I believed in unearned privilege. I believed in English Kenya. I believed in Mwai Kibaki, not Matiba. I believed I was an elite Kenyan and deserved a president who would not rock the boat. I remember that election very clearly …”

(2) In US media, much has been made of the circumstances of the death of American soldiers in Niger. But the larger question is why is the US army in Africa in the first place. If you were wondering, like me, big US military presence is on the continent. This article, with links to stories from 2012 to now will be instructive. 

(3) And according to Pentagon war game simulations, there will be a full-scale invasion of the continent in the near future. 

(4) Another worrying thread, regarding the American “war on terror” on the continent, has been the training of vigilantes. 

(5) Can we develop the study of Africa so it is more respectful of the lives and struggles of African people and to their agendas?

(6) An increasing number of political PR companies are setting up shop on the continent, and the fact of the internet as a way of reaching more people than in the past, has led to the proliferation of propaganda in the stead of real political communications with constituencies. 

(7) A four-year-old child was raped in Ghana. The local chiefs said nothing could be done because community gods deemed the suspect innocent. National outrage has thankfully led to the opening of a police investigation, but the fact that no attempt was made before speaks volumes about how likely rape is taken.    

(8) A French court has charged Equatorial Guinea’s Vice President (his father is the Life President) with corruption, seizing his assets in the country. How African regional bodies react will tell us a lot about willingness to fight corruption on the international stage.

(9) Watch and learn why we should eat more indigenous African fruits and vegetables. 

(10) An exhibition showing the works of Chief S.O. Alonge, photographer to the Royal Court of Benin, Nigeria in Nigeria marks the Smithsonian African Art Museums foray into exhibiting on the continent. 

(11) Meet the most decorated Congolese wrestler of all time; and

(12) Finally, for the young survivors of Ebola, cataracts—which usually only afflict the old—are another battle scar.

Further Reading

On Safari

On our annual publishing break, Gaza’s genocide continues to unfold in real time yet slips from public grasp. This is not just a crisis of politics, but of how reality is mediated—and why we must build spaces where meaning can still take root.

The battle over the frame

As Hollywood recycles pro-war propaganda for Gen Z, Youssef Chahine’s ‘Djamila, the Algerian’ reminds us that anti-colonial cinema once turned imperial film language against its makers—and still can.

Fictions of freedom

K. Sello Duiker’s ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’ still haunts Cape Town, a city whose beauty masks its brutal exclusions. Two decades later, in the shadow of Amazon’s new development, its truths are more urgent than ever.

When things fall apart

Against a backdrop of global collapse, one exhibition used Chinua Achebe’s classic to hold space for voices from the Global South—and asked who gets to imagine the future.

The General sleeps

As former Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari’s death is mourned with official reverence, a generation remembers the eight years that drove them out.

The grift tank

In Washington’s think tank ecosystem, Africa is treated as a low-stakes arena where performance substitutes for knowledge. The result: unqualified actors shaping policy on behalf of militarists, lobbyists, and frauds.

Kagame’s hidden war

Rwanda’s military deployments in Mozambique and its shadowy ties to M23 rebels in eastern Congo are not isolated interventions, rather part of a broader geopolitical strategy to expand its regional influence.