Sundaymail Editor
IT seems West Africa is on the precipice of a major cataclysm.
Apparently, the seven-day ultimatum issued by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on July 30 for the military in Niger to hand back power to President Mohamed Bazoum — who was deposed on July 26 — lapses today.
What, however, makes the standoff between ECOWAS and the Nigerien junta potentially consequential is the fact that the regional bloc has upped the ante by threatening to “intervene militarily”, if the uniformed forces do not cede power.
But Niger will not be easily browbeaten, as the fledgling regime seemingly enjoys support from the junta in three other West African countries — Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso, where the military similarly seized power in May 2021, September 2021 and September 2022, respectively.
If ECOWAS decides to follow through on its threats, it would set the stage for a major conflagration in West Africa, which the region can ill afford.
A metaphor for Africa
Ordinarily, many would not care less what happens in and to Niger, a country tucked away in West Africa and ranked among the poorest nations.
In the eyes of the world, Niger, as a poster boy of poverty, is the typical stereotype of an African country — hopeless, helpless and useless.
In fact, they say close to half of its population — or 10 million people — live in extreme poverty, while nearly half of its budget comes from foreign aid.
It is actually ranked seventh amongst the world’s poorest countries.
It also gets about 70 percent of its electricity from neighbouring Nigeria, a country that also grapples with power shortages.
But this is where it gets really interesting.
You see, Niger is not actually poor in the strictest sense of the word.
It literally lights up and powers France and, by extension, Europe, which have been feeding off its resources for years.
Although it is the seventh-largest supplier of uranium in the world, most of the resource is exploited by its former coloniser — France — through a company called Orano.
More than half of the uranium from Niger is used to fuel French nuclear power plants, which supply the European country with 70 percent of its electricity.
Remember that the next time you see images of a resplendent brightly-lit Eiffel Tower, itself financed by a French bank, Crédit Industriel et Commercial (CIC), which made windfall profits from the suffering people of Haiti.
Interestingly, 25 percent of uranium imports in the European Union (EU) — which gets a quarter of its electricity from nuclear energy — also comes from Niger.
Overall, half of the EU’s nuclear energy is produced in France.
Bishop Lazi hopes that you understand what is happening here.
Well, put simply, 70 percent of France’s energy supplies come from nuclear power plants that mostly rely on uranium from Niger, and Europe’s third-largest economy, in turn, feeds the 27-nation regional bloc with half its nuclear power, yet the energy-poor African country depends on another struggling African country, Nigeria, which produces 4 000MW, against current demand of 30 000MW from its 210 million people.
It is ridiculous!
If only Niger was able to produce power from its uranium, it could literally be a powerhouse, especially on a continent infamously known for its energy poverty.
The International Energy Agency estimates that 43 percent of Africans — about 600 million people — lack access to electricity, with 590 million of them in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Not yet uhuru
For people like Bishop Lazi, the Nigerien situation gets us closer to understanding the paradox of why Africa is fabulously rich in mineral resources and still finds itself desperately poor.
While we won the war against colonialism, neocolonialism is very much alive and minded by puppet regimes and askaris that serve as latter-day colonial clerks.
This is why France, Europe and the United States have been throwing tantrums and
hissy fits after the jettisoning of President Bazoum.
It jeopardises not only energy security in Europe, which has been trying to wean itself from Russian energy, but also Washington’s security interests in the region, as it presently has a US$110 million drone base in Niger for its operations in the Sahel.
Bishop Lazarus hopes you now understand the great power rivalry that also forms an intriguing subplot to the imbroglio in Niger.
But the increasingly restive populations in West Africa — whose straitened circumstances have been made direr by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war — can now see through the ruse of neocolonial designs, where former colonisers use foreign aid as morphine to assuage and temper growing revolutionary sentiment and Pan-African fervour, which explains the recent developments in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea and, lately, Niger.
Puppet regimes have now been put on notice.
Is it not French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau who once said “when the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich”?
James 5: 1-6 is instructive: “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you.
“Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes.
Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look!
The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.
“You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.”
New path
Niger is just but a microcosm of an Africa-wide problem, where former colonial powers still actively seek to impose pliant administrations to perpetuate the exploitation of mineral-rich countries, whose resources are used to enrichen the Western world.
The reason a resource-rich Africa remains trapped in seemingly endless vicious circles of poverty, disease, underdevelopment and violence has for long been articulated by our forebears such as Julius Nyerere and, recently, John Magufuli.
For as long as we let foreign companies control our resources and ship them to faraway lands to support alien jobs and industries, our continent will forever be regarded as a “scar on the conscience of the world”, while its people will always be considered “the scum of the earth”.
As Zimbabwe, thanks to sanctions, we have learnt that we can leverage on our own God-given resources, both natural and human, to extricate ourselves from the vice-grip hold of neocolonialism.
At a time when the world is in the throes of multiple crises, we now enviably boast one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa and the fastest growing in the region.
We have learnt to grow our own food and exploit our mineral resources — whose exports have since grown from US$2,7 billion in 2017 to US$5,6 billion in 2022 — to finance an ambitious infrastructure development and modernisation programme.
And Zimbabwe is determinedly marching ahead by opening new frontiers.
Perhaps now, more than at any time in its history, it is closer to tapping into its uranium deposits to secure its energy future.
On July 27, 2023 — a day after the Nigerian coup — Zimbabwe and Russia tellingly signed an agreement on cooperation in the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes, on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum in St Petersburg.
The agreement was signed by ROSATUM director-general Alexey Likhachev and Energy and Power Development Minister Zhemu Soda.
In essence, the pact establishes cooperation between Moscow and Harare in the peaceful use of atomic energy in a wide range of areas, “such as assistance in the creation and improvement of Zimbabwe’s nuclear infrastructure, in accordance with international guidelines; regulation in the field of nuclear and radiation safety; production of radioisotopes and their use in industry, medicine and agriculture; cooperation in areas of application of radiation technologies and nuclear medicine, education, training and retraining of specialists for the nuclear industry”.
Zimbabwe has been working on a draft policy that will guide the exploitation of uranium for peaceful purposes.
And President ED dropped the clearest sign yet of Zimbabwe’s ambitions at an investors’ meeting in New York in September 2022 that geopolitical concerns had previously forestalled exploitation of the mineral.
While cynics might be sceptical of the prospect of Zimbabwe generating nuclear energy, the Bishop is convinced that if anyone is capable of such a feat, it is definitely ED, who, like Deng Xiaoping was to China, is the father of Zimbabwe’s economic miracle.
He is the man under whose leadership local indigenous farmers have bested the record of erstwhile white settler farmers through record production of wheat and tobacco, among others, helping Zimbabwe achieve food security for the first time in more than two decades.
He is the man who has sent a satellite — ZimSat-1 — into orbit, while a second one is currently being built.
He is also the man who is close to completing a dam — Lake Gwayi-Shangani — whose construction was first mooted in 1912.And he is also the man who has modernised the Beitbridge Border Post and is close to completing the reconstruction of the Beitbridge to Harare highway.
So, if anyone is capable of building a nuclear power plant, you better believe that it would be ED.
The lesson that we learn from this, is that impoverished Africa should reclaim its agency by sweating its resources for the benefit of its now-impatient young population, which no longer accepts excuses as substitutes for good roads, well-lit streets, skyscrapers and trams in their cities, rewarding jobs, good food and a good future for their children.
Puppets will not cut it.
Bishop out!
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter