Africa and the Struggle Against Imperialism: Transcript of Abayomi Azikiwe Interview with Global Research News Hour, February 4, 2025

Global Research: Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are leaving the Economic Community of West African States or ECOWAS. Could you tell me how significant will this development be from the standpoint of the French and the Americans who sought to continue to dominate the region within their imperialist grasp?

Abayomi Azikiwe: In 2008, the United States Africa Command, AFRICOM, went into operation. And since that time period, there’s been a growing presence of U.S. as well as French military forces on the African continent.

In regard to Mali, it was a former French colony. It is a landlocked country. And since the destruction of the North African state of Libya, instability in North Africa and West Africa has accelerated.

Now, in 2012, fighting began once again between the Tuareg people of the northern part of Mali and the central government. This was not a new phenomenon. This has been going on since the early 1960s.

These were unresolved issues from the French colonial period. And then, as a result of that, it opened the way for other Islamist and so-called jihadist organizations to come into northern Mali as well. France sent in their own military forces, ostensibly to drive back and to destroy the rebel organizations operating in the north.

And to a certain extent, the central part of the country. Well, after a decade, it was quite clear that this policy was not working. In 2020, there was a military coup in Mali, which overthrew a civilian government, which was heavily allied with France.

Some of the military personnel who were involved in this coup d’etat had close ties with both the French military as well as the Pentagon. But after a while, I think the realization began to set in that the presence of these troops correlated with the escalation in jihadist violence in Mali. This violence had spread to Burkina Faso, Niger, and to a lesser extent to other states in the region.

So what has happened since the coup in 2020 in Mali, and then, of course, there was another one two years later, then, of course, the coup in Burkina Faso, and later in Niger, these took place in 2022 and 2023. So France’s reaction, the reaction of the Economic Community of West African States, which is closely allied with both France and the United States, was initially not only to impose sanctions and a virtual blockade on the country, but they wanted to send in a military force to overthrow the CNSP government in Niamey, which is the capital of Niger. And of course, the outrage throughout the region prevented that from happening.

So these are some of the dynamics that have led to the current situation. France agreed to withdraw their troops from Niger, so did the United States, which had a drone station there. And also the uranium interest is under reconsideration right now as well.

Niger has some of the largest deposits of uranium in the world. So this is what’s going on right now in the Sahel region. They formed the AES, and this coalition has drawn the attention of progressive forces throughout Africa, and also throughout the African diaspora.

There have been delegations that have gone to Niger, they’ve gone to Burkina Faso. In Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, they have established a Thomas Sankara Center, and that center is doing a lot of great work in terms of promoting the ideas of African unity and anti-imperialism. So that gives you an idea of what’s been happening in the Sahel region in West Africa over the last several years.

GR: When the Libyan government was overthrown in 2011 by NATO, I’m wondering if that may have been added to that Pan-African sentiments.

AA: Exactly. And Colonel Gaddafi had taken the lead in regard to advocating African unity, and he at one point in 2009 was chair of the African Union.

When the African Union transitioned from the Organization of African Unity in 2002, the initial discussions around that took place in CERT in Libya. They issued a declaration, people can read it even today, the CERT declaration, which led to the reform within the African Union. And of course, the combined efforts of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, NATO, also the allies of NATO, people like who are in control in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, they all participated in the destruction of Libya, sending in special forces, rebel groups, which were given cover by the massive airstrikes that were carried out against Libya between March and October of 2011, killing anywhere between 50 to 100,000 people, also displacing 2 million people, and reducing Libya, which was the most prosperous country on the African continent, to one of the most destitute and divided.

Today, it is overrun by all types of criminal elements. There’s all types of human trafficking that is going on there. And they have failed 14 years, and they have not been able to create a unified central government in Libya.

So the displacement in Libya, the breakdown of civil society in the state, the Libyan state, created displacement into Mali and into other states. And of course, the CIA and France undoubtedly are behind these jihadists and rebel groups. That was uncovered last year in Mali, when they revealed that the Ukrainians, which are being propped up by the United States, were in fact training these rebel groups and giving them logistical advice in regard to how to destabilize Mali.

And I’m sure that’s happening in other states as well.

GR: Are you saying that with the degree to which the US is instigating a lot of this, are they trying to take over and sweep up the remains of the French empires for themselves?

AA: Yes, but I don’t believe it’s going to work because even in countries like Senegal, for example, which had elections last year, initially did not appear to be heading in the same direction as the Alliance of Sahel States. Nonetheless, they did declare several months ago, they wanted all foreign troops out of Senegal.

The same situation in Chad and also, surprisingly enough, in Cote d’Ivoire, in the Ivory Coast. Now, the Ivory Coast government that’s in power now was actually installed by French paratroopers in 2011, around the same time as the destruction of Libya and the initial rebellion that was instigated by the imperialists as well in Syria. So all of this was taking place simultaneously.

But today, they’re saying they want the French troops to leave Ivory Coast as well. And I don’t believe that the United States has the capacity at this point to stabilize any of these states because they in fact want, they really want the minerals, they want the metals, they want the strategic agricultural corridors and the strategic waterways off the coast of West Africa. They want to dominate those, but it’s going to be very difficult because they have to contend with the Russian Federation, they have to contend with China, and other countries that are attempting to form alliances all across the African continent.

In order for there to be unity, genuine unity on the continent, there has to be a struggle waged against imperialism. There’s no other alternative in my view. The African Continental Free Trade Area is based in Ghana.

They’re attempting to form some type of inter-African trading and economic network. But that’s going to be impossible as long as the imperialists can actively disrupt what these countries are doing in regard to economic development and also internally, if they are funding these rebel groups, opposition groups to destabilize the countries. And when the countries are destabilized, that provides a rationale for the imperialists to come in and dictate the terms of any type of national agreement or continue the unrest.

And it will be more advantageous for them to, in fact, bring about their enrichment and the further impoverishment and underdevelopment of those living on the African continent.

GR: People of the region, what do they have to do so that they will achieve actual autonomy from, let’s say, US and French influence as opposed to anything sort of like a fake autonomy, so to speak?

AA: Well, they have to have a clear position against imperialism. The historical relationship between the Western capitalist countries and the so-called developing countries, or today they’re often referred to as a global south, they have to organize, they have to unify, and they have to be willing to defend their land, their mineral resources, and their people.

I don’t think declaring that Africa needs to unite, Africa needs to integrate economically, because that’s totally in opposition to the aims and objectives of the United States, of Britain, of the European Union. So in order for that to succeed, the African people, through their leadership and organization, have to be willing to struggle against the imperialist system. Now we’ve seen that clearly in other parts of the world, whether it’s in Latin America, West Asia is a good example in terms of what has been happening in Palestine, in Lebanon, and other countries, Yemen.

So people have to be willing to struggle in order to bring about genuine unity and sovereignty of the continent.

GR: I want to go a little further east now to Sudan. The Sudanese, they’ve been in a civil war of sorts since August of 2023.

How did that start? And what kind of foreign interference, if any, is benefiting from it?

AA: Well, we have to go back to some of the political turmoil that has been taking place in Sudan, particularly since late 2018, when there was a huge economic crisis. Many people went out on strike, they engaged in mass demonstrations. This went on for four or five months, and it was obvious that the current Sudanese state at that time could not maintain control over the society.

So the then president, al-Bashir, was overthrown by his fellow military officers that have been a part of the Sudanese state. The transitional military council that was formed after April of 2019 hoped that the overthrow of Omar Hassan al-Bashir would, in fact, quell the concerns of the masses inside of Sudan. That did not happen.

People continued to organize and demand a return to multi-party democratic rule. And of course, that has been a major issue that divided the military from the Sudanese Professional Association, other groups, the FF, Forces for Freedom and Change. And of course, there have been divisions going on since 2019.

Then of course, there was a coup, initial coup, that overthrew the interim prime minister, Abdallah Hamdok, in late 2022. And then of course, in 2023, there was the eruption of a war between the Rapid Support Forces, which is a paramilitary force that grew out of the struggle in Darfur between the central government in Sudan and the rebels in the Darfur area, and the Sudanese Armed Forces, which is the conventional military force for the country. And they’ve been fighting since April 15th of 2023.

It’ll soon be two years and another couple of months. And the destruction has been massive, particularly in north Darfur and around the capital of Khartoum and Abdurahman. And of course, we’ve seen in recent days, the SAF headed by the military chief, he has made advances over the last several weeks in beating back the RSF.

But who knows if this is going to be sustainable or not. But the country, which was in dire straits even prior to the eruption of the fighting in 2023, is in far worse shape now. More people have been dislocated.

People have fled as refugees into Chad, into Egypt, into South Sudan. And efforts to bring about some type of peaceful diplomatic solution have failed. So it’s not clear exactly what’s going to happen over the next few months in the Republic of Sudan. But as long as you have this type of division going on between the military elements, and this is why it was so important, the popular mass struggles that took place were extremely important because they wanted to remove the military from the principal organs of the state, which they have dominated.

Even the economy, the banking sector, international trade has been heavily dominated by military forces for decades in Sudan. So this has prevented any type of democratic transition inside the country due to the conflict between these two major military factions inside of Sudan. So if the SAF is able to defeat the RSF, that may solve part of the problem in the short term, but it still does not solve the problem of actual development and the democratic process that needs to resume inside of Sudan.

GR: From the standpoint of US or foreign interference, do they benefit from the ongoing nature of the fight, or do they want one side or the other to win?

AA: Well, they wanted initially to bring Sudan close, very close into the Western imperialist camp. During Trump’s first administration, he pressured Abdallah Hamdok, this was in 2020, to, in fact, sign an agreement normalizing relations with the state of Israel. This was even in contravention of the Sudanese constitution.

In 1958, just two years after the country got its national independence, the parliament there passed the Israeli Boycott Act, which prohibits the state of Sudan from having any type of normalized relations with the state of Israel. This was done as early as 1958, and Hamdok had no authority whatsoever to exercise that decision. And of course, that has fallen apart, largely because of the Al-Aqsa flood, which started in October of 2023.

And then of course, with the conflict, the inner Sudanese conflict between the RSF and the SAF has also slowed down and really neutralized that whole process. So prior to that, even under al-Bashir, they were transporting and shipping weapons and other supplies to the people in Gaza that were being utilized by the resistance to fight against Tel Aviv. And so it was quite a contradiction under the latter days of the Trump administration to actually pressure the interim prime minister to accept normalized relations with the state of Israel.

Sudan can never benefit in that regard. So that’s why there needs to be a democratic government there that’s revolutionary, that can in fact, put the country on a proper course, both domestically and internationally.