Last month, France’s majority state-owned nuclear conglomerate Orano revealed that the military government of Niger has assumed “operational control” of its Nigerien uranium mining subsidiary, Somair. In a statement dated December 4, it claimed decisions made in board meetings at Somair – in which the state of Niger has a 36.6 percent stake – were “no longer being applied”. Critically, it said the Nigerien authorities were refusing to suspend production at the mine, while also not allowing the export of the produce, allegedly “placing a heavy burden on the employees and local communities”.
Orano says it first began to encounter difficulties in running Somair in July 2023, soon after a group of high-ranking army officers, led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, ousted Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum.
As a response to the coup, regional bloc ECOWAS suspended Niger’s membership and imposed sanctions on the country. These included trade sanctions that brought all exports via Benin, including Somair’s uranium exports, to a halt.
ECOWAS lifted these trade restrictions in February 2024, but Nigerien authorities decided to keep its border with Benin closed. They have also refused to recommence Somair’s uranium exports through an alternative route, and effectively ended the Orano subsidiary’s chances of commercial survival.
The military government dealt a further blow to Orano’s interests in Niger in June by revoking the permit its other subsidiary, Imouraren SA, held for mining the Imouraren uranium deposit – which is believed to be one of the world’s largest – on the grounds that the French company’s plans for development did not meet expectations.
The Nigerien junta’s apparent hostility towards the French nuclear giant is not without reason.
Since first assuming power, Niger’s military rulers have been voicing their discontent with the process by which foreign companies are able to secure lucrative mining licences, saying the land-locked African nation’s 27 million citizens ought to derive greater profit from its rich uranium deposits.
Their argument has merit.
Despite all its natural resources, Niger stands as one of the world’s poorest countries, with almost half of its population living in extreme poverty and some 13.1 percent facing severe food insecurity. Despite helping keep the lights on in Europe with the uranium found on their land, only one in seven Nigeriens has access to modern electricity services. The West African country has ranked 189th out of 193 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index for 2023-24.
Clearly, the average Nigerien has gained almost nothing from the country’s abundant and enviable natural resources over the years. This deep injustice can be blamed in great part on the actions of France, Niger’s former colonial authority.
Niger declared its independence from France in 1960, but never really managed to put a stop to French exploitation of its uranium deposits. Taking advantage of trade agreements dating back to the pre-independence era, France has been extracting uranium in Niger with the highest possible profit margins, giving the Nigerien people nothing but crumbs, for over five decades. And at times, according to Nigerien officials, the French companies do not even pay what they officially agreed for the exports.
Mahaman Laouan Gaya, a former Nigerien energy minister and the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) secretary-general until 2020, for example, told the German publication DW in a 2023 interview that Niger exported uranium worth 3.5 billion euros ($3.6bn) to France in 2010 but received only 459 million euros ($480m) in return.
Now, it seems, at least on the surface, the military government is rightfully trying to put an end to this unequal and exploitative trade relationship built upon French colonial privilege. Nonetheless, when you dig a bit deeper, it becomes obvious that the military government’s actions are not based solely on a desire to further the Nigerien national interest. The non-elected administration’s primary purpose in targeting Orano appears not to be to protect the nation from colonial exploitation, but to pressure France to recognise its rule.
Niger’s Mines Minister Colonel Abarchi Ousmane acknowledged as much in a recent interview with the RIA Novosti news agency.
“The French state, through its head of state, has declared that it does not recognise the current authorities in Niger,” he told the Russian outlet in November. “Does it seem possible to you that we, the state of Niger, would allow French companies to continue extracting our natural resources?”
It is clear from this statement that the military government may be willing to allow Orano to continue extracting Niger’s resources after all, but only if the French government gives them legitimacy in the international arena (and perhaps a slightly better share of the profits).
Alas, the military government appears to be doing the right thing, at least for the time being, but for the wrong reasons.
Nigeriens have an inherent right to control their national resources. Yet this fundamental right should not be abused to ensure the political wellbeing and long-term survival of an increasingly oppressive coup regime that is closely aligned with Russia – another self-serving imperial power, no doubt, eagerly waiting for its turn to exploit Niger’s uranium reserves and other resources.
Resource nationalism that the military government seems to be promoting can immensely help Niger, and bring its people well-deserved prosperity and stability. But only if the country’s rulers refrain from replacing the exploitation by the former colonial masters with their own homegrown corruption and violent repression.
Indeed, the appropriation of efforts for and rhetoric of indigenisation by a seemingly nationalistic and anti-colonial leadership to further its self-serving agenda is not without precedent in Africa. And every time a government or leader turned indigenisation in general – and resource nationalism in particular – into a tool for consolidating power to oppress the people, the end result has been economic, political and social devastation.
Take Niger’s oil-rich neighbour Libya – perhaps the country that achieved the most success through indigenisation on the continent.
Two years after gaining power in a bloodless coup in September 1969, then-Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi sought to renegotiate the oil price to fund a socioeconomic revolution.
After extensive negotiations, Libya signed a groundbreaking deal with Western oil companies in March 1971. The deal raised the posted price of Libyan oil from $2.55 per barrel to $3.45, leading to an annual revenue increase for Libya exceeding $600m (equivalent to approximately $4.6bn today).
Two years later, in September 1973, Libya went on to nationalise 51 percent of the assets of all the oil companies operating in the country. As a result of the pursuant windfall, per capita incomes soared in the North African country, increasing from $1,830 in 1970 to more than $4,000 in 1975 and becoming one of the highest in the world by 1979.
With the substantial financial resources he gained from resource nationalism and indigenisation, Gaddafi successfully initiated a new era of quasi-socialist socioeconomic advancement that facilitated the construction of new housing, educational institutions, and healthcare facilities. For a while, the revolution made exceptional gains. Libyans experienced exponential improvements in living standards, literacy rates, and life expectancy.
Yet the good times did not last – partly because Gaddafi moved to place himself and his regime as the new oppressor of the nation he freed from Western exploitation.
Along with commissioning shiny new developments, Gaddafi unleashed a wave of oppression – censorship, enforced disappearances, large-scale arrests, show trials, televised public executions, and massacres – that targeted university students, intellectuals, devout Muslims, opposition groups, and political rivals.
Gaddafi’s willingness to crush fundamental civil liberties and human rights to silence any critical voice and hold on to absolute power quickly turned him from a nationalist hero to a feared villain. The antigovernment protests and internal strife triggered by widespread state violence, coupled with pressures from the Western powers upset at losing cheap access to the country’s resources, led to the demise of his regime in 2011, and a second civil war in Libya.
For a moment, Gaddafi – and Libya – was winning. The country had regained control of its riches. The future was bright. But he blew it.
Another noteworthy example of an African nationalisation effort that ended in chaos and suffering due to a supposedly “nationalist” and “anti-colonial” leadership’s hunger for absolute power and personal enrichment occurred in Zimbabwe.
In 2000, under the leadership of former President Robert Mugabe, the ruling ZANU-PF party launched an accelerated land reclamation programme aimed at addressing the injustices of land appropriation that occurred during British colonial rule. About 170,000 Black Zimbabwean families were resettled, each receiving 6 hectares (15 acres) of prime agricultural land that had previously been owned by about 4,000 white commercial farmers.
However, ZANU-PF carried out an extremely chaotic, violent and highly politicised land reform exercise. The supporters – real and merely suspected – of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party were targeted. Mugabe used all the state’s resources not to give Zimbabwean people back what was stolen from them by colonists – as he promised – but to silence dissent to his regime. Ultimately, the violent methods employed to implement land reform and coerce Zimbabweans to continue voting for him eroded national cohesion, provoked sanctions from Western countries, and resulted in a disastrous economic downturn.
Today, seven years after the end of his rule, Zimbabwe is yet to recuperate from Mugabe’s critically needed and highly justified, but poorly and unjustly executed land redistribution endeavour.
Since 1960, that pivotal year when 17 African nations achieved independence, indigenisation and resource nationalism have always been in vogue in Africa. Today, from Senegal to Ghana, many African leaders still say they are working to help Africans reclaim what is rightfully theirs, and enhance local ownership of oil, gas, and mining enterprises in their countries.
Resource nationalism can indeed provide African nations with the push they need, and help them finally achieve true independence and long-lasting prosperity. However, as events in Libya and Zimbabwe proved, efforts at nationalising resources, under the guidance of selfish leaders more concerned about their political future than the wellbeing of the nation, can prove disastrous.
Niger is now at a critical juncture. If its military government chooses to pursue true resource nationalism, keeps its many promises to the nation, and sets up a new system that would allow every penny earned from the extraction and export of uranium to return to the people, the country can truly prosper. If indigenisation comes hand in hand with democratisation and people power, Niger can finally shake the last remnants of colonial control off its shoulders, and become – as Libya briefly was – an engine for progress in Africa.
Regrettably, the military government seems to be opting for another path, one that may help it politically in the short term but would undoubtedly harm the country in the long run.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.