00:00October 29, 2026.
00:03In the Kremlin sit delegations from 48 African countries, 21 led by heads of state.
00:09The chair of the African Union, Burundi's Evaristian Deashimi says Africa has not come
00:14to ask for aid.
00:15At the same moment, fuel convoys enter Bamako under military escort because an Al-Qaeda
00:21affiliate is trying to strangle the capital.
00:24And Niger now owns a uranium mine that fed French reactors for half a century.
00:29So, is Africa breaking the chains of neocolonialism, or trading them for new ones?
00:35Nkrumah, Fannin, Cabrel, Samir Amin, and Giovanni Arrighi will help us answer.
00:40In August and September 1960, the flags changed.
00:44Niger, Upper Volta, today's Burkina Faso, and Mali became independent.
00:50In 1965, in neocolonialism, the last stage of imperialism, Kwame Nkrumah named what came
00:57next, a state with all the outward trappings of sovereignty, whose economy and policy are
01:02directed from outside.
01:04In the Sahel, that direction had a name, the CFA Franc, created in 1945 and pegged to the
01:09Euro since 1999.
01:11It obliged the regional central bank to deposit its reserves at the French Treasury.
01:15All of them at first, then 65%, then 50%, with French officials on its board.
01:22A reform announced in 2019 ended both.
01:25But the peg, guaranteed by Paris, still ties the money of a herder in Gao to the European
01:31Central Bank.
01:33And Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger still use the CFA Franc.
01:37Then extraction.
01:39Between 2005 and 2020, Niger supplied about 19% of France's natural uranium.
01:46Niger's government says that from 1971 to 2024, the French state company Orono took 86.3%
01:54of the Samer mine's output.
01:56While owning 63.4% of it, Orono contests this in international arbitration.
02:03Meanwhile, Niger ranks 188th of 193 on the UN's Human Development Index.
02:11Tied with Mali, Burkina Faso is 186th.
02:15Samir Amin called this the polarization between center and periphery.
02:20The periphery is not poor because it is outside the system, but because of its place inside
02:24it.
02:25Raw materials out, finished goods, and debt in, profits repatriated.
02:31Independents changed who sat in the palace, did not change the Sahel's place in the World
02:35Division of Labor.
02:36Between 2020 and 2023, soldiers seized power twice in Mali, twice in Burkina Faso, and once
02:44in Niger.
02:46Crowds cheered, many waving Russian flags.
02:49Why?
02:50Almost a decade of French operations from Serval in 2013 to Burkain had not stopped an insurgency
02:56that was born in northern Mali in 2012 and had spread to other countries by 2015.
03:02French troops left Mali in 2022 and Burkina Faso and Niger in 2023.
03:08The UN mission in Mali left that same December.
03:11Then came a rupture in three moves, security, a mutual defense pact in 2023, the exit from
03:19a COAS announced in January 2024, a confederation, the Alliance of Sahel States, that July, and
03:27a joint force of about 5,000 troops in December 2025.
03:32Institutions, a joint investment bank, a common passport, a shared television channel, the
03:39bones of a state project.
03:42Resources.
03:43Mali's 2023 mining code lets the state take up to 35% of projects.
03:48When Canada's Barrick resisted, Bamako seized three tons of gold and put the Lulagong-Koto
03:54complex under state administration.
03:56In November 2025, Barrick accepted the code, agreed to pay about $430 million, and dropped
04:04its arbitration claim.
04:05Only then did it get the mine back.
04:08With gold about a quarter of Mali's budget that matters, Mali also began building a state-controlled
04:14gold refinery with Russia's Yadron Group, and Niger nationalized the Samer mine.
04:19But let's tell no lies.
04:21The war is not won.
04:23The 2026 Global Terrorism Index places about half of the world's terrorism deaths in the
04:29Sahel.
04:29For the third year running, even as Mali's own toll fell.
04:33Since September 2025, Jainam has choked Mali's fuel supply.
04:39In just two months, Belenkat verified more than 130 destroyed tankers.
04:43On the 25th of April, 2026, coordinated attacks killed Mali's defense minister, Sadio Kamara.
04:51Sovereignty declared on paper still has to be defended on the road to Bamako.
04:56So who filled the space France left?
04:59Moscow points to history first.
05:00The Soviet Union armed and trained liberation movements, Algeria's FLN, Angola's Mpala, Amilkar
05:07Cabral's PAIGC, and in Rhodesia, Joshua Nkomo's Zappu, although Mugabe ZANU, which took power
05:15in Zimbabwe, is backed mainly by China.
05:17Moscow's University for the Third World was named after Patrice Lumumba in 1961.
05:24Post-Soviet Russia dropped his name in 1992, restored it in 2023, just as it turned back
05:30to Africa.
05:31Dmitry Trenin, writing in RT, makes Moscow's case, Russia has no ideology to export, does
05:38not go to Africa mainly for resources, and never colonized it.
05:41And through the Africa Corps, the defense ministry's successor to Wagner.
05:46Russian military personnel now operate in all three AES states.
05:51At the October summit, Moscow put its offer on paper, a 101-point declaration.
05:57Backing legal mechanisms for colonial reparations and the return of looted artifacts, opposing
06:02unilateral sanctions and the freezing of sovereign assets, and calling for more African weight
06:07in international institutions, Putin said Russia had helped Africans liberate themselves from
06:12the neo-colonial yoke.
06:13Putin puts Russia-Africa trade at $27 billion and wants to double it.
06:19He says 85% of settlements now run in national currencies, including the ruble.
06:24For the Sahel, Russia's development bank signed a memorandum with the AES Investment Bank.
06:30A memorandum, not yet money, Nikolai Golovko, of Moscow's Higher School of Economics.
06:37Also writing in RT admits a pronounced imbalance.
06:40In 2025, Russia sold Africa 22.7 billion dollars of goods and bought only $4.4 billion, and about
06:4870% of the trade is with North Africa.
06:51By Moscow's own numbers, Russia is not yet a market for African industry.
06:55It is a supplier, and in the Sahel, above all, a security supplier.
07:01Now compare.
07:02Chinese customs put China-Africa trade at a record $348 billion in 2025, almost 13 times
07:10more.
07:11If Russia is the security partner, China is the economic weight, infrastructure, credit,
07:17and, since May 2026, tariff-free access for all 53 African countries that recognize Beijing.
07:25But notice the same pattern.
07:28China sold Africa $225 billion of goods and bought $123 billion.
07:35Africa's deficit hit a record of about $100 billion.
07:38Manufactured goods flow south, raw materials flow east.
07:41A new center, the same division of labor.
07:45In Adam Smith in Beijing in 2007, Giovanni Arrighi argued that American hegemony had entered its
07:52terminal crisis, and that the center of the world economy was shifting to East Asia.
07:57Read through Arrighi.
07:58Such moments open a window.
08:00As the old hegemon weakens, peripheral states gain room to bargain.
08:04And the Sahel bargains with China, too.
08:06In March 2025, Niger expelled three executives of Chinese oil companies over pay, by the
08:13oil minister's figures.
08:14About $8,700 a month for a Chinese employee.
08:17$1,200 for a Nigerian in the same job.
08:21In May 2026, a new deal gave Niger 45% of the Chinese-run pipeline company.
08:27Local jobs, local revenue, local control, the same demand, made of every partner.
08:32So the AES is not simply swapping the West for Russia.
08:36It is using Russia, China, Turkey, and others to multiply its options.
08:41Now, the rigorous part.
08:44In Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, written in 1916, Lenin answered Kautsky, imperialism
08:52is not a policy that finance capital merely prefers, a bad habit one country could drop.
08:58It is a stage of capitalism.
09:00It's a monopoly stage.
09:02So the real question is, does this relationship change the Sahel's place in the world economy?
09:07Samir Amin gives us a test.
09:09In Capitalism, in the Age of Globalization, in 1997, he argued that the center reproduces
09:16its domination of the periphery through five monopolies, technology, global finance, access
09:23to the planet's natural resources, media, and communication, and weapons of mass destruction.
09:29Weapons.
09:30Amin meant the center's ultimate military supremacy.
09:34At the Sahel scale, the question is, who guarantees your security?
09:38The Ease broke with Paris.
09:40But the Africa Core answers to Russia's defense ministry.
09:42One dependency can replace another.
09:45Finance.
09:45Resources.
09:46Ruble settlements and a memorandum are real but small.
09:49And the CFA franc remains.
09:51Resources.
09:52The strongest point.
09:54A tougher mining code.
09:55A nationalized uranium mine.
09:57A refinery under construction.
09:59But Barrick still runs Mali's largest gold mine.
10:02Amin would ask, who runs the mine, and where does the rent go?
10:06Technology and media.
10:08According to Putin, the summit signed deals to bring Russian digital and AI systems into African
10:13public administrations.
10:14France.
10:15Its media forum was run by RT, Sputnik, and TASS.
10:19Replacing France 24 with RT is not media sovereignty.
10:23It is a change of microphone.
10:25Then Fannin, in The Wretched of the Earth, in 1961.
10:30He warned of a national bourgeoisie that steps into the shoes of the colonial settlers.
10:36Speaks the language of liberation and discovers its historic mission, that of intermediary.
10:41In the same chapter, he warned of an army that becomes autonomous and goes into politics.
10:47Look at the record.
10:49All three juntas have dissolved political parties and extended their rule to 2029 or 2030.
10:58Mali's General Goita now holds a five-year mandate, renewable as many times as necessary until the country is pacified
11:05without an election.
11:06And the guns.
11:08A 2023 UN human rights report found that at least 500 people were killed in Mora, central Mali, in March
11:152022, most of them summarily executed by Malian troops and foreign military personnel.
11:21The UN did not name them, but at the time Wagner operated alongside the Malian army.
11:27Human Rights Watch accused the army and allied militias of killing at least 31 villagers in
11:31the Sigu region.
11:33An anti-imperialism silent about peasants killed by friendly guns is not anti-imperialism.
11:37It is just a change of flags.
11:39In 1965, Cabrel told the PAIGC, tell no lies, claim no easy victories.
11:47And in The Weapon of Theory, in Havana in 1966, he argued that the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie
11:54must be capable of committing suicide as a class, to be reborn as revolutionary workers, or else betray
12:01the revolution.
12:01Sovereignty of the state is not yet sovereignty of the people.
12:06And Nkrumah and Africa must unite, in 1963, divided, African states stay weak before foreign
12:13capital.
12:14Three landlocked countries cannot escape the world market alone.
12:18And Amin's delinking, first set out in 1985, never meant autarky.
12:24It meant subordinating foreign relations to a national popular development plan, the need
12:28scale.
12:29The Sahel, the African Continental Free Trade Area, and, one day, Nkrumah's Continental Union.
12:37Moscow's own Golovko offers the yardstick.
12:40New capacities, trained specialists.
12:43Lower import dependents, a larger tax base.
12:47Let's hold Moscow, Beijing, and the juntas to it.
12:50So, chains broken, or masters changed?
12:54Neither yet.
12:54The Sahel has won something it has not had since the Cold War, options.
13:00And Nkrumah's generation had them too, between East and West, and learned that options alone
13:06do not liberate.
13:07Nkrumah himself was overthrown in 1966.
13:11A multipolar world is not liberation.
13:13It is a window, and in Origi's terms, the systemic chaos between hegemonies closes once a new order
13:20settles.
13:21Three tests for the next three years, the span of Moscow's 2027-2029 action plan.
13:28One, is Malian gold refined and sold on Malian terms?
13:33Two, can Niger sell its uranium without trading French control for Russian control?
13:38Three, and the most important, do the peasants of Mopti and the workers of Nehemi feel safer
13:43and freer than before the coups?
13:46If yes, the Sahel will have done what Cabrel asked, turned flag independence into national
13:52liberation.
13:52If not, we will have watched the same old film with new subtitles.
13:58We must not harbor the illusion that the elements defining sovereignty shift in a linear
14:03or monolithic fashion.
14:05Reality is far more complex than simple theoretical propositions.
14:09One must possess the maturity to interpret it as such.
14:13Signs may point toward either an advance or a regression in the degree of a nation's dependence.
14:19It is our duty to support the various forms of struggle for sovereignty.
14:23While being careful in particular not to fall into idealism regarding the methods of that
14:28struggle, any form of contestation that enjoys popular support and is increasingly aligned
14:34with the interests of the working class deserves our backing.
14:38Idealism serves only the rhetoric of the dominant ideology.
14:42From the global south, about the global south, question every capital, including the friendly
14:48ones.
14:49Subscribe and tell me in the comments, which test will the Sahel pass first?
14:53And don't forget, like the video and subscribe to the channel to keep thinking about the world
14:58how it really is.
14:59Let's see.
