Ovigwe Eguegu: African Geopolitics in the New Cold War

Podcast: The Geopolitics & Empire Podcast is joined by Ovigwe Eguegu. He is an international security analyst based in Nigeria who specializes in security diplomacy, geopolitics, global system transformation, conflict, and peace. We’ll be looking at Africa and geopolitics in the context of the New Cold War, including the numerous actors who are continuing to vie for influence, and which are not limited to the United States, the EU, Russia, China, Turkey, and Middle Eastern states. We’ll also look at African debt relief and China decoupling.

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Just yesterday we reached the maximum user limit for our email list services free tier and so now we must pay a new costly annual fee, and so donations go to pay for these essential services Now on to our guest and African geopolitics. How are you doing these days Ovigwe, you’re currently in Nigeria?

Ovigwe Eguegu: Yes, yes I’m in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria. I’m doing fine and you?

Podcast: I’m doing well, that’s good to hear. So I thought before we start that you would educate us a bit on how Africans today view the foreign influences vying for economic, cultural, and political control in Africa. You know, for many years it’s been my dream to go visit Africa but now with the economic problems that we’re facing, the historic economic problems, and the whole Covid situation and the difficulty of travel I don’t know if that’s going to become a reality. But whether we’re talking about the Western powers, Russia, China, the Middle East, we all know the history of imperialism in Africa and so maybe if you can enlighten us a bit on what is the opinion or feeling of Africans today regarding what’s going on.

Ovigwe Eguegu: Yeah, it’s been quite quiet you. I think Africa started making the news again for stuff other than poverty and humanitarian missions from around 2000. Because the 1990s were really like a lost decade or where what we had was quiet. I remember that New York Times article about the Forgotten Continent. There were so many negative headlines about the African story, but I think around 2000 was when we started getting some of our act together as a continent. First of all, because I think one of the good things we’ve done as a continent, was repurpose the OAU to get to the AU, the AU being quite committed to the new agenda 2063.

And during all of this background what it has been doing with its international partners was sort of like created it simply for a new Africa, including when the Chinese started coming into Africa. I think one of the first countries they or the first country that they started making waves in was Ethiopia and then Angola. So with the coming of China and Chinese investments, spreading from Ethiopia to Angola, forming a good partnership with South Africa, and South Africa eventually becoming a member of BRICS. Even in my own country in Nigeria and Kenya, with the coming of China, there was this new enthusiasm in Africa. What we now have in Africa is now China has overtaken other partners as the biggest trade country for many African countries and biggest trade partner for many African countries in I think for about 10 years.

But you know you begin to see this new interest in Africa not just from the Chinese both from all other big players, like the United States sees Africa something some of Europe’s backyard or their cousin’s backyard where they have their own independent interest on the continent. But I have always looked at U.S. foreign policy through the lens of Europe because you know West Africa is seen as something like between France and UK. South Africa’s seems to be Britain’s sphere of influence and so on so for, but with the U.S. still being the preeminent power and it being in geopolitical rivalry with China there is this new competition or Cold War in the imagined in global space and Africa again is at the center of it because whether it’s in trade whether it’s in technology, the US and China are at loggerheads battling each other.

The Europeans are also still interested in Africa, but I think Europe, Europe-Africa relations has always been, very contentious. On one hand there is the talk of development, development, development, and support in Africa to develop but, nobody really sees much that’s being done in terms of how that development is going to be done, is going to be achieved. What you get most of the time are massive donations towards maybe humanitarian war, there’s some trade of course, and also it choose the core to Europe’s interests like security, transfer, or migration into Europe. Europe…has been forced to externalize its border into North Africa.

So if you see, if you look at Europe’s strategy, initial strategy for Africa which was launched two months back Ursula, the EU president and AU sat over a period of like two three weeks, you know, discussed and they announced it but the Africa Union is not happy about it because Africa is saying it wants to develop its own strategy, but if you only look at what Europeans are saying, things like sustainability, things like gender issues or gender equality, education, climate change, migration, all of these are already in our own African Union Agenda 2063, right. So the Europeans didn’t really bring anything new in terms of goals, so what they might have brought is this is how we think Africa should, approach these issues. President or the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, mentioned a meeting in Europe of African leaders that she just wants, to listen. I mean what kind of, what kind of summit or conference are we talking about where we just want a listening party or what? We have a continent that is trying to become better and we want a case where the foreign players are looking to Africa’s own collective approach to development as well as see how they can contribute or on how we can partner not coming from outside, until you know this is how you should do what you want to do. So looking at all of this, whether its China, whether its U.S., the United States whether it’s, France, you already called the bigger European Union.

It’s a very interesting time to specialize in African affairs or be an African involved in politics because, there’s always this battle of who is doing the most for Africa or who is not doing enough or who is just speaking and not really not necessarily doing anything but, of all of these issues, the most fundamental thing that everybody has to put in the back of their mind is that we Africans we also want to develop too – we may have issues with corruption, leadership and misrule, but the fundamental issue with us in the Sahel remains peace, right. But, if we pick an example, the United States and France, now they are locked in this tussle over who should lead MINUSMA- the UN Mission in Mali.

But let’s not forget that in addition to the suffering today in the Sahel is as a result of the ousting of Gaddafi, right, because and it was very clear before the ousting of Gaddafi, before NATO started intervening, its intervention in the Libyan crisis then, the African Union should … Jacob Zuma the president of South Africa, who went all the way to the African Union to decry NATO’s involvement and there was a collective statement from the African Union condemning the attempt or the discussion that was coming out of Europe and United States that NATO is going to be involved in in the war. What happened, Africa was ignored, NATO got involved, bombed Libya out of oblivion, and then we had this case where there was a massive pouring of weapons from Libya, south into the Sahel. You could trace the increase in violence and activity of terrorist organizations in Sahel, from you know the point of Gaddafi’s death all the way from 2011-2012, you know, the huge spike whether its Boko Haram activity, whether Al-Qaeda, you know in the Islamic Maghreb and then ISIS later came, we never had ISIS in a West African province all of these groups, they were they were either just festering then or they weren’t even known, but the moment we had breakdown of law and order in, you know in Libya, in Libya, it was a huge disaster for the Sahel and then all of these groups began receiving cheap arms, you know, and fighting, and of course, terrorizing, within six to seven months of Gaddafi falling, Mali was almost was technically a failed state. It’s very important and again then maybe they thought that would be the last of it because they were always suffering, but immediately either the issue in Syria ended up out of control, Libya became a point for migrants to take on the journey towards Europe so the problem started to impact the locals.

Before we knew it, it becomes a foreign policy disaster for them because that always backfires, and, it’s something that I would say the Chinese have over, the Western counterparts in the content of Africa because there seems to be more rapport between Beijing and leaders on the continent. If African leaders feel China respects their voice China gives them a listening ear as to how things should be done that doesn’t mean the Chinese do not push, that’s something, that’s a major issue on the continent of Africa where we feel the East seems to listen to us more, the West doesn’t listen enough and they come giving lectures and telling you how to do what you think you want to do for yourself so, from last year even… even new players are coming up Russia, already, coming back to the African space after so many years. We had the Russia-Africa Summit not as big as the forum for The China-Africa cooperation. In terms of attendance it was really good we had like about 41 presidents or heads of government from the African continent, out of 54 member countries so it’s very important that Russia also is coming back on the African continent because no matter the legacy of the Soviet Union in some countries like in Somalia, there still are many countries in corners of Africa today that won’t be independent or they wouldn’t have gotten their independence at the time that it did without support from the Soviet Union, so I think it’s a is a very important time for Africa to begin to look at this relationship through the lens of of its own interest.

Russia has already, it entered the continent with a bang I would say because you could see within a year of entry into the conflict in Central Africa Republic (CAR) Russia was able to contribute to the peace process in a very significant manner. So much so that the African Union you know, the Peace and Security Commission actually gave kudos to the Russian side for the constructive role that it played, so now we have some form of basis upon which to build a more peaceful society in Central African Republic. Yeah, of course, you know, there was this video that I made on social media of Central Africa Republic troops singing a Russian song as they were marching and there was a lot of talk “Ohh” you know, Africans are being colonized again by the Russians and when last year also during Liberation Day of Rwanda, the Rwandan army was marching and the commands were in Mandarin because they had, you know, Chinese instructors, changing the approach to, you know, to the parade and march and there was also this talk of “oh” Africa has been colonized, you know, by China forgetting that most of Africa had been marching to British, you know, and French style depending on who colonized them, but this is not necessarily a matter of OK, because we were colonized by Britain, now we have to move and you’re satisfied. You should move to the Russian style or to move to the Chinese style.

I think the underlying issue is: let us decide, we didn’t decide to be colonized by the British, or we didn’t decide to adopt British style, we didn’t decide to adopt the French style, those were forced upon us, right. But if today in our military cooperation we want to adopt the Chinese style, that’s our choice, it’s the choice of the African countries to say OK, we admire how the Chinese march, or we admire how you know they operate, we want to adopt this style and so on so for this is not perfect, but that’s just how it is. Every country in Africa today looks up to maybe a particular country before the model we developed. Rwanda, for instance they really talk about modeling after Singapore. Singapore is not an imperial power, it’s is just…looking at your country and similarities with other countries and seeing what you can learn from them, you know, how you can adopt their systems, how you can use that, and, use imbibe it in a way that you can use, you know, to develop so whether it’s in security, whether it’s in development whether it’s in environment and other areas I think it’s very important that Africa is not robbed of its agency in how it should develop.

Let’s give an example, the issue with China, I think China is like the biggest player and news-maker on the continent today. At the moment, the issue is on debt relief. And before the Chinese came up, they’re still, they are open to negotiating on bilateral terms. African governments are signaling that they want to negotiate collectively. That wasn’t even possible because some countries are in poorer shape than others. But as an African I would say yes, it would have been better if we could get a collective bargain, and negotiate collectively with China, but that’s not that’s not how they operate that’s not how they operate and they want to do it but what did Africa do? It has to play along. In Nigeria, for instance, our government is already looking at debt, or loans taken from China all the way back to 2000. Because there’s a lot of talk of these Chinese approaches to development or Chinese financing, we are also doing due diligence. It is very important that the US and the West don’t just look at Africa as that part of the world that doesn’t know what it’s doing, you know. We’re studying Chinese also, we know, we know colonialists, or we know imperialists when we see them because we have like a long time of experience with them.

The issue going forward, whether it’s in debt, whether it’s in, you know, post- coronavirus, reconstruction of the world order or you know international trade or realization of economic cooperation, it is very important that we are not looking East, that we are not looking West, but that we are looking forward and for us to look forward, we have to be very, very, cautious to understand in this time of global competition, under what order do we want to live? Do we want the Western lead international system? How has that worked for us?

We’ve had decades since our independence and all we’ve done is pretty much liberalize, liberalize… there’s one or two times where we get leaders, especially after colonization, we had Sékou Touré, we had Robert Kaunda we had some very vibrant leaders. The majority of them were killed either by CIA-backed coups or by the French. Today they denied Africa, they denied Africa the foundation builders and all we got after that way, you know leaders who just send … to Paris or to London before they get anything done and that has really halted our development and before you know it the IMF and the World Bank came with their austerity measures, social adjustment program, and we kept privatizing, privatizing, privatizing to the point where these states are demoralized, you don’t have power to do anything because they don’t even have sources of income.

So it’s, it’s very important now that as we’re going forward…the coronavirus has given Africa a time to take stock of how it has approached development to date, and it’s it been very poor there are very few countries today that have been able to you know, really do enough testing that have been able to you know to really socially mobilize their population in a coordinated manner country’s like Botswana have done really well, countries like Namibia also have done very well. Rwanda, done very well. You know, my country Nigeria not so well. Yes, we’ve upped our testing but we’re not testing aggressively enough which, what we do is sensitize, sensitize and one of the problems which I’ve seen with the coronavirus is that we just adopted you know the lockdown model, forgetting that we don’t have the economic resilience or the people don’t have the economic resilience to live in a lockdown so within two weeks there was a massive issue of crime upsurge in Nigeria because you know we can’t afford it, people can’t stable and   that’s why going forward from the Coronavirus we have to really ask ourselves this question because as it is now we are the crossroad in global politics.

China is emerging, the Chinese order with the Belt & Road Initiative with coordination with you know some of its very key strategic partners like Russia trying to reshape global politics in a way that I think is more pro South-South cooperation. right. Now we’ve seen what the West can offer in terms of these structures, this is how it is. The Western institutions you know, like IMF, like the World Bank, like WTO, you know that’s the Western economic model, which is free market, for us now we have to look at how has that worked for us, what is the Chinese… what are they offering and that should guide how we really think of going forward with all of this prattle because if we do not get it right it’s going to be a huge problem just as, I was talking to a colleague in Germany, and I was saying that very soon there may be a time where Africa should sit and if we are going to have like a Non-Alignment Pact as the African Union or as African countries to say OK, it’s getting relief, yes.

On the South China Sea and even the wider Asia-Pacific , even here at home there’s so much anti-China coverage that we see in mainstream media especially those from the US, the BBC, CNN and also in Europe too like BBC and so on and so forth so do we as a continent do we want to take sides or do we want to take a neutral position just like we did during the first Cold War when it was US and USSR so I think it’s very important that we begin to start thinking to have these conversations because if we don’t we’re just going to you know have like a disastrous series of events once the Cold War game really gets heated up because it’s already heating up I think that’s part of reason why the U.S. is just pulling out of all of this treaties the ABM is gone, the INF is gone in a recently Open Skies gone. The big daddy of them all, which is START it’s due to expire next year. Once all of these signs tell you. China also is militarizing, it’s arming up itself with its defense budget for this year with a 6.6% increase it tells you that they are launching a new Destroyer almost every month you know so there’s a lot of build-up between China and the US and once you have a Cold War a Cold War basically just means you have intense political confrontation in between two countries and by propaganda coverage of news on each other, so once we understand there’s a Cold War brewing in international system we as Africans we need to start having a conversation on how do we react to this system and how can we shape this system and how do we play with this system so that it’s in our interest? This has to be discussed through the lens of that Cold War because you never know how heated it’s going to get.

Podcast: And just to clarify a bit or summarize so it seems you’ve given us a great insight and

overview but would you say then Africa as a continent is now leaning a little bit more toward say China and Russia and overall the sentiment…whatever Europe and the US have to offer as well as Russia and China there are pluses and minuses for all actors but is there generally a more positive view towards China than negative?

Ovigwe Eguegu: Well, I think it depends on the country but generally speaking I think what one of the positive things that works for the Chinese-African cooperation is that there is no issue of colonialism on the continent, right. That might seem as something that is small and its way in

the past, but it has shape how Africans look at the Chinese, so if you look at, if you look at the relationship today, it’s mostly because we get a lot of loans from the Chinese to fund our development you know programs and that’s that has really helped with Africa’s development, the shiny groups you are seeing you know the standard-gauge railway in Kenya the one cutting through several countries, Uganda West Africa, in Nigeria for instance there are several projects a railway project, ports you know, airports these are things Africa has lacked for decades, right. I can’t even remember the last airport that we’ve seen which was fully funded by the IMF on the continent of Africa Ethiopia built a railway line back one hundred years before the Chinese funded railway lines in Ethiopia, that says a lot right. The infrastructure gap that China has really realized. The infrastructure gap that China has really contributed towards closing it is one of the reasons why the Chinese are popular on the continent today right.

So, on the people-to-people level, there are issues There are issues, there are understanding issues, there are communication issues even with the issue in Guangzhou that came up not so long ago about discrimination against Africans, that impacted people-to-people relations, right, but politically, you know and internationally looking at state to state relations I think it’s very good. China is already showing…one of the pressing issues today for us is debt, you know. we haven’t been able to repay this debt and the Chinese are already seeing the outcomes to debt relief scheduling payments just to ensure that African countries can recover the West for instance yes we’ve seen money come from the IMF to Nigeria, 3.6 billion dollars you know some money has gone to Ghana you know like a South Africa is also negotiating, there is no easy way to look at who is being favored or who is not being favored I think it depends on the issue that is being looked at for instance if we are looking at the issue of development this seems to be when I talk about development, I mean real development like infrastructure, there seem to be more affinity toward the Chinese right but maybe development programs like Humanitarian affairs and stuff like that, then we see more activity from Western governments there have security.

The West seems to still be in the lead so it depends on the area, the areas we are looking at and for security, for instance just as much as they contribute there’s also still a lot of Chinese troops, blue helmets, on the continent also, so it’s for a country like Zimbabwe, it is clearly the East, what they have as a foreign policy is nothing short of a Look-East kind of policy. Countries like Kenya tend to be more open more flexible but they also still are open to both sides, but a lot of their engagement is increasingly increasing towards China to even India then Somalia for instance very much ignored by major powers, major players except for development [?] but talks have also invested a lot in [?] building in Somalia and it’s very important that you know the Somalis today have a very close relationship with the Turks because they were the first, if not the only country to really start looking at Somalia as a possibility after a long period of civil unrest, war, and Al-Shabab, you know, who will tear any place apart, nobody wanted to put money at the time when you know the talks under the leadership of Erdogan began to do that that doesn’t mean that the talks have the perfect foreign policy in Africa but and in Somalia they are acting constructively. Nigeria, for instance will always have like a very open economy diplomacy kind of foreign policy where it’s about the economic cooperation to where I’m doing trade with you, in your direction, while doing trade with the West tomorrow, who are looking in your direction.

Countries like South Africa of course because they are part of the Belt & Road and more intimate in China’s BRICS, that’s the China-led BRIC alignment or actor constellation. They seem to be very, very much clearly more pro-China. Some of the countries like Morocco for instance, they seem to have closer ties with Europe and the EU maybe because of their proximity and also because of their own development strategy and plan. Europe seems to be you know a better partner for them, so I think there is no umbrella there’s no easy way to just look at the issue of where Africa is looking and where Africa is not looking, it is specific to countries and also specific to issues.

Podcast: And something you’ve written about for the Africa Report and it’s been talked about recently, was this US wanting to draw down its presence in terms of troops and soldiers in Africa do you think that’s going to happen or because we know that the US has you know 800 military bases around the world a number of them in Africa. They run secret wars and covert ops all around Africa, but do you think the US is just, that they’re going to draw down troops?

Ovigwe Eguegu: Well, I think what you will see would even be an increase incrementing in troop capacity or let’s say numbers. When that report came out, yeah, it was quite shocking for me because I felt one of the main, one of the main stories that would be sold for the US to protect the continent of Africa has been counterterrorism but that’s not easing up anytime soon. If anything between…just before Coronavirus it was really massive. From December to January there were series and series of attacks across especially Burkina Faso, Niger. The border area. Also in the Lake Chad region so when the news came that the US is considering pulling troops out of Africa it was quite shocking because it’s at the time where there is an increase in terrorism and this is what you people told us that you are here to fight.

But I think it’s also because the US is moving, like we saw with Bolton announcing, the former National Security Adviser to Trump saying, sorry Mattis rather, Jim Mattis defense secretary was saying they’re making that shift towards Great Power competition with China so terrorism is no longer the strategic objective or is the issue the foreign policy issue for the DOD so maybe that’s why something very  important to note because most of the regional security forces have come to rely on US intelligence and logistics support especially the French because the French have what we call Operation Barkhane. Barkhane is like the major operation to really push out terrorism, all that transnational criminal activity like smuggling, trafficking, you know and so on and so forth so the French rely so much on the US drone base in Agadès, US operations to actually carry out to support counterterrorism operation around the Sahel region.

However, there’s been reports on Al-Jazeera poking holes at the real reason why the French are in West Africa, citing huge deposits of natural resources in the Sahel, protecting their interests you know in places like Niger and Chad and so on and so forth so yes of course there is always and I always like to tell people who can understand combating terrorism in West Africa is not necessarily in the West’s interest because Boko Haram is never going to bomb London tomorrow or Paris tomorrow. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb probably won’t. Yes, they can act as a launching pad for other terrorist organizations from the rest of the world the rest of the world like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but it’s a familiar problem and the regional security forces have come together to create what they call G5 Sahel Force and that is so underfunded that it’s barely doing anything right

So if the US is trying to pull out of Africa it has to be done in a very constructive way, you have to pull in all the security partners to say okay, how can we ensure that when we leave they, won’t be like a gap that then reduces the effectiveness or the operational capabilities of all this regional security force you know activity to stamp out terrorism so for us it’s just it’s never going to happen in my opinion, because I feel when even no matter how the US tries to not have bases or run bases it’s almost like an addiction to keep opening more bases more bases and more bases you know all across the world so you know there’s a huge, you can draw a line from Senegal all the way to Somalia of US bases that are just lined up just across from West Africa all the way to East Africa down into the Horn of Africa so it’s how the US in a geostrategy operates with foreign bases in certain a region to further their interests first. And for them now there are not so much US troops in West Africa it’s maybe, I remember talking to a former US colleague and them saying it’s maybe a few hundred, you know, in Niger, and around in and surrounding countries, but them being there is primarily for intelligence and logistic purposes.

Whether we take that with a pinch of salt or not is not important, the important thing is if they want to leave they should do that in coordination with our security forces so that they will be no gap or no sudden gaps and that may just hurt our own security, missions, and peace-building efforts.

Podcast: All right you’ve given us a really good overview on what’s happening in Africa especially being the first episode on Geopolitics and Empire where we looked at Africa. I’m sorry it took so long and I’ll have to keep looking at this topic more frequently is there any final thought or final issue that you want to leave us with regarding Africa?

Ovigwe Eguegu: I think just like I’ve said before I think it’s very important now for Africa at this time in the world No matter the country, whether it’s East Africa, West, South, or Central it doesn’t matter to begin to put on the geopolitical cap because it’s through that lens that we can understand what these countries are doing in the corner of Africa whether it’s in Libya why is Turkey in Libya? That question cannot be answered from “Turkey wants to contribute to international peace and security” No! You have to, we have to look at, we have to follow the money, we have to follow the resources you have to follow the interests, you know, why is Russia coming here? Why is China here? Why is the US doing this? Why are they not doing that?

Once we…once, it’s very important for us as Africans right now to begin to look at news through that lens. When you hear something in the news the first thing that you notice in international relations and international politics is how does this news impact what power distribution, especially at the continental level and it’s going to be very important because any cold air of Cold War , the interests move really fast, interests are perpetually shifting in this dynamic environment and it would be a disservice to Africans if our leaders our policy experts are not really looking at global events through that lens of geopolitics.

Podcast: Your Twitter feed is at @OvigweEguegu and it’s a very excellent resource that I follow and constantly retweet and you also I think write for the Africa Report and the China Africa Project are there any other websites or projects you’d like to mention?

Ovigwe Eguegu: Yeah I’m just I’m just in the middle of launching something like a publication and a political advisory firm so what we’re looking at maybe sometime in June to really launch

We’re doing a lot of work behind closed doors. So that’s at www.AfriPolitika.com Watch out for that space. So, yes I’ll say to your excellent, excellent audience they should be looking out for Afripolitika.

Podcast: OK, that’s very cool I’ll be looking out for that and it’s been a pleasure Ovigwe

talking to you for this first time and I look forward to speaking again in the

future and thanks for being on Geopolitics & Empire!

Ovigwe Eguegu: Thank you so much.