- 21 minutes ago
Russia and China are reshaping Africa's Sahel. After France was pushed out of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, is the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) winning liberation or a new dependency? A Marxist analysis from the Global South.
In October 2026, 48 African delegations met at the Russia–Africa Summit in Moscow. This video looks at what is really changing in the Sahel: the end of French military presence, the CFA franc, uranium and gold, the Africa Corps (Wagner's successor), China–Africa trade and the multipolar world. Then it tests the new partnerships with the tools of Lenin, Samir Amin, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah and Giovanni Arrighi, and asks who really sets the terms.
Moscow's claims are taken from Russian state media (RT) and are always attributed on screen as the voice of the Russian state, not as neutral fact.
📚 SOURCES
RT – Russia-Africa Summit 2026 takeaways
RT – D. Trenin, Why Africa needs Russia
RT – N. Golovko, Russia-Africa 2026
UN News / OHCHR – Moura report (2023)
Human Rights Watch – Ségou (2025)
Global Terrorism Index 2026
Bellingcat – Mali fuel blockade
NTU – China-Africa trade hits $348bn
IISD – Barrick and Mali settlement
Orano – Somair and ICSID
Summit footage: [SOURCE / LICENCE – e.g. kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0]
Maps: Natural Earth / world-atlas. Graphics are illustrative; schematic charts are marked as such.
📚THEORY IN THIS VIDEO
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)
Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (1997); Delinking (1985)
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Amílcar Cabral, "The Weapon of Theory" (Havana, 1966)
Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (1963); Neo-Colonialism (1965)
Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century (1994); Adam Smith in Beijing (2007)
🔔 Thinking Global covers the economic forces reshaping power in the 21st century, with primary sources, structural data, and no simplifications.
In October 2026, 48 African delegations met at the Russia–Africa Summit in Moscow. This video looks at what is really changing in the Sahel: the end of French military presence, the CFA franc, uranium and gold, the Africa Corps (Wagner's successor), China–Africa trade and the multipolar world. Then it tests the new partnerships with the tools of Lenin, Samir Amin, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah and Giovanni Arrighi, and asks who really sets the terms.
Moscow's claims are taken from Russian state media (RT) and are always attributed on screen as the voice of the Russian state, not as neutral fact.
📚 SOURCES
RT – Russia-Africa Summit 2026 takeaways
RT – D. Trenin, Why Africa needs Russia
RT – N. Golovko, Russia-Africa 2026
UN News / OHCHR – Moura report (2023)
Human Rights Watch – Ségou (2025)
Global Terrorism Index 2026
Bellingcat – Mali fuel blockade
NTU – China-Africa trade hits $348bn
IISD – Barrick and Mali settlement
Orano – Somair and ICSID
Summit footage: [SOURCE / LICENCE – e.g. kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0]
Maps: Natural Earth / world-atlas. Graphics are illustrative; schematic charts are marked as such.
📚THEORY IN THIS VIDEO
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)
Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization (1997); Delinking (1985)
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
Amílcar Cabral, "The Weapon of Theory" (Havana, 1966)
Kwame Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (1963); Neo-Colonialism (1965)
Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century (1994); Adam Smith in Beijing (2007)
🔔 Thinking Global covers the economic forces reshaping power in the 21st century, with primary sources, structural data, and no simplifications.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
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.