France's withdrawal from Niger not a question of if, but when, according to analyst
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00:38 - France has already left Mali and Burkina Faso.
00:50 So when the CNSP, the junta in Niger
00:54 had requested that France also leave Niger,
00:57 I think there was a little bit of a ticking time bomb there
01:00 in terms of when that was actually going to happen.
01:02 It wasn't really a question of if, but rather when.
01:05 The problem is, is that these three countries
01:09 have come to terms with the fact that they are not okay
01:12 with the way that France went about.
01:14 It's almost 15, 10 years at least
01:17 of a counter-terrorism mission there,
01:19 whether their reason for this notwithstanding,
01:24 it's clear that they're all kind of in lockstep
01:26 in terms of their approach towards France.
01:28 So it's not exactly surprising.
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01:41 The way in which they have dug their heels in
01:56 with the growing anti-French sentiment
01:59 and the very, very loud popular support for the junta
02:03 did not exactly end well for them.
02:05 And that's kind of why we're seeing them kowtowing
02:07 to the CNSP's demands and bowing out now.
02:11 What this means for the future is obviously
02:13 not fully clear, but I think it will have an impact
02:16 on the way that the junta also reacts
02:18 and responds towards other Western partners in the region.
02:22 That said, hopefully France can continue to navigate
02:25 its relationship with West Africa
02:27 by and through other partners like the US
02:29 and other European partners that still remain there.
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02:38 I think these countries are going to have
03:01 a huge security vacuum that they're facing.
03:03 We're already kind of getting,
03:06 we're getting a preview of what might come down
03:08 the pipeline for Niger with what's taking place
03:10 right now in Mali.
03:11 And I think that we should expect significant spillover
03:17 of the jihadist expansion in Mali into Niger,
03:20 something that we haven't seen in the past year specifically.
03:24 I think we can anticipate that there will be
03:26 significantly more attacks and more violence,
03:29 both by the Islamic State Sahel, but also by JNIM.
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03:35 The Wagner group, when it was under purgation,
03:45 I didn't fully believe that they would have been able
03:48 to actually enter Niger, mostly because
03:52 there had been talk for years, well, not for years,
03:54 but for some time at this point
03:55 that Wagner might enter Burkina Faso,
03:57 but those arrangements hadn't been made.
03:59 And it seemed that their ability to do much in Mali
04:03 was quite limited.
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04:27 Africa is the future, and it's been that way
04:37 for some time now, and it's about time
04:39 that the rest of the world kind of reckon with that.
04:43 We saw several leaders during the UN General Assembly
04:46 make the case that the time for our position at the table
04:50 as equal partners, instead of as just recipients
04:54 and beneficiaries of aid and diplomacy is now.
04:58 If the US and the West and Europe
05:02 does not take this seriously,
05:04 we will lose those partnerships.
05:05 And that is the risk that is coming down the pipeline.
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