The implications of the U.S. military withdrawal from Niger \u2014 increasingly backfilled with Russian troops \u2014 have become the subject of a heated public discussion in the West African region.<\/p>\n
In March, Niger\u2019s junta announced it was breaking off its decades-long military alliance with the U.S. \u201cwith immediate effect\u201d and demanded the withdrawal of nearly 1,000 U.S. troops stationed in the country.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div> U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed <\/a>on May 3 that Russian military personnel have installed themselves at the American airbase in Niger. The Kremlin rebranded the notorious Wagner Group as the Africa Corps after the failed rebellion and death of its funder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, last August.<\/p>\n \n<\/div> Some West Africa watchers, like Colin P. Clarke, the director of research at the Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consultancy, expressed <\/a>worry that the growing Russian presence in the Sahel, invited in by the military juntas that have ousted several democratically-elected governments, will only worsen the violence that is surging throughout the region.<\/p>\n \u201cMy concern is that if the Russians come in \u2026 they continue to make the terrorism problem worse, not better, and then when they\u2019re done extracting what they want to extract, they\u2019re going to pack up and go home, and this place is going to look like a nightmare, \u201d Clark told Foreign Policy magazine.<\/p>\n Others, like Nigerian investigative journalist and filmmaker David Hundeyin, say the U.S. never cared about protecting Africans from violent extremists but placed its troops in the Sahel to \u201censure the flow of Africa\u2019s natural resources,\u201d the same as the \u201cold colonial military bases.\u201d<\/p>\n In a viral debate on X, on May 5, Hundeyin argued that:<\/p>\n \u2019\u2019American foreign policy sees the Uranium in Niger\u2026 the oil in Escravos and the lithium in Kogi as valuable assets\u2026 A U.S. military base anywhere in Africa serves EXACTLY the same purpose that the old colonial military bases did – to protect the flow of African resources, and not the lives of African people which America considers to be less than worthless.\u201d<\/p>\n That is false.<\/p>\n Far from robbing the Sahel region of its natural resources, the United States has invested<\/a> in strengthening its security more than any other foreign nation. Between 2001 and 2020, the U.S. dedicated $3.3 billion to the Sahel and trained at least 86,000 counterterrorism troops in the region, including nearly 18,000 in Niger. That is more than all other foreign nations combined.<\/p>\n U.S. long- and short-term civilian assistance in the region remains<\/a> a significant source of food security, energy, agriculture, and transportation. In 2022 alone the U.S. spent about $11 billion in the African region, including $1 billion aid in humanitarian assistance to people affected by conflicts, floods, droughts, famine, and other disasters in the Sahel region, which includes Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.<\/p>\n Niger is also one of the biggest<\/a> beneficiaries of USAID\u2019s programs through the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance.<\/p>\n As for the U.S.\u2019s role in extracting Africa\u2019s natural resources: China, France, Japan, and Spain are the largest extractors of uranium in Niger. China is also the single largest harvester of Nigeria\u2019s lithium. Two private U.S. companies, Chevron and Exxon Mobile, are involved in Nigeria\u2019s oil production through local subsidiaries.<\/p>\n Nigerian oil <\/strong><\/p>\n The Nigerian government controls all sectors of the nation\u2019s oil and gas industries through the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, the largest oil producer in Nigeria that operates under joint ventures with about 50 gas and oil companies.<\/p>\n The Escaravos GTL (gas to liquids) plant that Hundeyin named in his X post is a local subsidiary of the U.S. private firm Chevron and has a 75% share of that plant\u2019s production in partnership with NNPC, which controls<\/a> the remaining 25%.<\/p>\n \n<\/div> Apart from Chevron, the top five oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria include a Nigerian government-controlled subsidiary of the British Shell Energy Nigeria; a Nigerian government-controlled local subsidiary of the U.S. Exxon Mobil; a Nigerian government-controlled subsidiary of French firm Total Energies and Italian Eni Spa; and Equinor ASA, another Chevron subsidiary, co-owned by a local firm, Prime 127 Nigeria Ltd.<\/p>\n Nigeria lost<\/a> to corruption and mismanagement an estimated $35 billion in oil revenues between 2019 and 2022.<\/p>\n Eni Spa, Exxon, Shell, and TotalEnergies have all sought to exit Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta in recent years, citing security concerns, including theft and sabotage, to focus instead on deep-water drilling.<\/p>\n Nigerian lithium <\/strong><\/p>\n According to public records, the U.S. government has zero involvement in the mining of Nigeria\u2019s lithium.<\/p>\n When Tesla, a private U.S. company that manufactures electric vehicles, expressed interest in forming a trade relationship with the Nigerian government to mine lithium, Nigeria declined<\/a> the offer, conditioning the agreement on Tesla\u2019s establishment of a battery factory in Nigeria.<\/p>\n In February 2023, the Nigerian government awarded a contract to build the country\u2019s first lithium-processing plant to China\u2019s Ming Xin Mineral Separation Nig Ltd. (MXMS), making it the single-largest lithium harvester in the country. China proposed a plan to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles (EVs) in Kaduna, a state in northwestern Nigeria, projected to yield 18,000 metric tons of lithium daily.<\/p>\n Nigeria’s Minister of Solid Materials Dele Alake said<\/a> that “\u2026no company would be allowed to mine and export raw lithium unless they set up processing and refining plants in Nigeria.”<\/p>\n As of January 2021, the Nigerian government had licensed<\/a> 185 local companies to commence extraction of lithium in Nassarawa, Kogi, Kwara, Ekiti, and Cross River States.<\/p>\n Nigerien uranium <\/strong><\/p>\n Hundeyin\u2019s suggestion that the U.S. government has stakes in Niger\u2019s uranium is also false.<\/p>\n Niger\u2019s Ministry of Mines has on its website a list <\/a>of five companies licensed by the Nigerien government to mine uranium. The list does not include any U.S. firms. Instead, the Nigerien government is the major shareholder, partnering with Chinese, French, Spanish, Japanese, and South African companies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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