A Closer Look with Josh Parker Allen

Good morning Africa Briefers,

A ‘closer look’ at the coup in Gabon this week, as the Central African state becomes the sixth Francophone country to have its leader fall to a military coup in the past three years, following Mali, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and most recently, Niger (Reuters). In this brief, we’ll give you the latest on what’s happening, some broader regional and historical context, the potential implications for China, and our take at the end.

Now-former President Ali Bongo was removed from office last week Wednesday by a military junta, shortly after he and his party declared victory in recent elections marred by allegations of corruption and vote-rigging. On Monday, General Brice Nguema, who some sources allege is a cousin of the toppled Bongo (BBC), was sworn in as interim president, to the consternation of the US, France, the UN, and the African Union, which has suspended Gabon’s membership of the bloc. The removal of Ali Bongo from office puts an end to 55 years of rule from the Bongo family, with Ali succeeding his father Omar, who presided over the country for 41 years before his death in 2009.

In Gabon’s capital of Libreville, people took to the streets to celebrate the military takeover, with longstanding and profound frustration amongst Gabonese at the corruption, kleptocracy, and extreme levels of inequality that has defined the Bongo-era, though it is not clear that these celebrations are necessarily nationally representative. Nonetheless, despite Gabon having the third highest GDP per capita in Africa (a similar level to Brazil), around one in three live in poverty on less than US$5.50/day, and there has been widespread anger at the government’s failure to deliver substantive development gains to large swathes of its populace given the country’s resource wealth (Al Jazeera; Al Jazeera).

France 24 reports that meetings between the new interim-President Nguema and leaders from opposition parties, business, and various branches of government are ongoing, and that the military leadership have promised a return to democracy and an end to the corruption of the outgoing regime. At his inauguration on Monday, President Nguema lambasted the “flagrant disregard of democratic rules” perpetuated by his predecessor and pledged a return to democracy and a popular referendum on a new constitution (see video: Reuters).

But the leader of the opposition party, which claims to have won the country’s recent elections, has cautioned against optimism that Gabon’s course will be much improved, noting that the coup was very much an inside job - President Nguema is from the same clan as the Bongos, and served as the leader of the Presidential Guard under both Ali and Omar (BBC). It is thus possible that Nguema saw that the Bongo clan’s grip on power was waning and used allegations of election-rigging as a cover to make his own claim to power in a show of strength. Time will tell.

Reactions to the coup have differed noticeably from those following other recent coups in Africa: while it has been condemned by the West and the UN, there is acknowledgement that the election was invalid too, and few voices are calling for the reinstatement of Bongo as president. Josep Borrell, for instance, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, told media last week that “Military coups are not the solution”, but that rigged elections, or “institutional coups”, are equally problematic means of attaining power (VOA). Such a position was also well articulated by Professor Chidi Anselm Odinkalu of the Fletcher School in a recent FT column.

Moreover, Gabon differs greatly from the Sahelian states that have also seen coups recently in that there is no extremist militant activity; no presence of the Wagner group or any equivalents; it is much wealthier, with its sizeable oil and manganese exports; it has been politically stable for many years (excluding a brief and unsuccessful coup in 2019); and it even has Africa’s highest rate of champagne consumption to boot (The Interpreter).

What does unite Gabon with its Sahelian counterparts is its historical ties to France. Following the independence of most of France’s African colonies in 1960, France pursued a policy now known as ‘Françafrique’, in which it sought to maintain its sphere of influence in Africa. This involved close ties between French political, military, and intelligence leaders, and resulted in significant French military intervention in Africa - annually on average between 1960 and the mid-1990s. Françafrique has been criticised for being neocolonial and in explicitly protecting French political and economic interests in the continent. Since the end of the Cold War, France has scaled back its political and military ties with its former colonies, finally withdrawing its deployment of troops from Mali and Burkina Faso in the past year, where they have been replaced by Wagner mercenaries. Protests in Niger over the continued presence of French soldiers have grown this week, after that country’s coup last month (France 24). France maintains a deployment of around 400 soldiers in Gabon currently (The Interpreter).

What can we make of these events in Francophone Africa? Heated debate on this is currently taking place in Paris, with former French PM Dominique de Villepin telling France Inter radio, “Symbolically and politically, this situation marks a strong decline for France, and unfortunately . . . there’s a risk things will deteriorate” (FT). Despite President Macron’s aims of restarting France’s relations with its former colonies in what he has termed a “partnership of equals”, it seems that its star is waning in West Africa and that it’s too little, too late. Some have pointed to former-President Sarkozy’s infamous 2007 comments that “the African has not fully entered into history” as evidence of the drawn-out poisoning of French-African relations.

Underpinning each of these West African coups is frustration that too much power and wealth has been consolidated in too few hands for too long, and that geopolitical proximity to the French has delivered little to these countries in the way of development gains, or national security, in the case of the Sahelian states. That said, it remains to be seen whether the coups in Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, and now Gabon will actually see any of the many issues these countries face substantively change - it is quite possible they will not: the reasons for these coups are by no means all humanitarian, even if the rhetoric from those conducting them says otherwise, and these new military leaders may simply grab power for themselves.

Such a point was made in compelling and polemical terms by the prolific Nigerian historian Professor Toyin Falola, who wrote a searing op-ed for Nigeria’s Premium Times last week. Falola argued: “The founding champion of Gabon’s kleptocracy… Omar Bongo, ruled the country as his personal fiefdom for forty-two years and in the full glare of all the institutions and countries that today claim the status of “champions of democracy.” Knowing that he had to present the guise of credible elections, Omar Bongo deployed every trick in the book to circumvent the system and perpetuate himself in power… In over fifty years, one family converted Gabon into a private estate; [now,] even the coup has brought to power the cousin of the deposed president, to prevent the opposition from taking over power”. Whether Falola is right and that we will see more of the same remains to be seen. What remains clear is that France’s influence in Africa is in freefall, and that Macron has an enormous, uphill climb to create anything resembling a “partnership of equals'' with leaders on the continent, after France for so long actively supported kleptocrats as a means of preserving political and economic assets on the continent.

Meanwhile, China circles. Like its response to the other West African coups, its only response to ongoings in Gabon has been to ask for a “peaceful resolution and Bongo’s personal safety”, and it is likely that it will seek to work with whomever comes out on top (The Interpreter). In 2018, former-President Bongo made a state visit to China, during which time President Xi Jinping upgraded relations with Gabon to a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership” - Beijing’s highest level of bilateral relations - and there is already speculation that China may choose Gabon as the site of its rumoured plans for a West African naval base in the coming years (The Interpreter). China currently imports large amounts of manganese ore from Gabon, and Chinese firms manage most of the country’s logging industry, but the East Asian state imports a relatively small share of Gabonese oil, the country’s largest export by far.

French influence in Africa has long been in decline. Ever the internationalist, President Macron will be acutely aware that the Gabonese coup could lead to a deterioration in France’s relations with one of its strongest partners on the continent, and that the next few months will be pivotal in preventing China from enhancing its influence in the state. But Macron’s position is a difficult one. On the one hand, pushing too hard for a return to democracy could swing Gabon towards Russia and China and lead to it denouncing French neocolonialism and paternalism. On the other, not pushing hard enough could lead to a continuation of kleptocracy in Gabon, and the persistence of critiques such as Falola’s that champions of democracy are actually little interested in it, and more concerned with their own interests.

It is too early to tell whether President Nguema’s new regime will be much different to its predecessor, but were Gabon to see a peaceful transition of power to the opposition, this would be a ‘coup’ of a very different kind for the West. What is unavoidable for whoever leads Gabon over the next few years is the need to diversify the economy away from oil as the country’s reserves begin to dwindle, as well as the need to share revenues more widely than the Bongo dynasty has done so far (S&P Global). We should therefore expect the possibility of more state intervention in the economy and efforts to renegotiate oil, mining, and logging contracts.

While events in Libreville have meant neither the incoming nor outgoing Gabonese Presidents have attended the African Climate Summit in Nairobi this week, the future of Gabon’s economic diversification away from hydrocarbons may well entail the monetisation of its carbon sinks: its rainforests absorb 140 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, while its oil wells, once depleted, could be used for carbon capture (UN). Gabon was the first African recipient of a debt-for-nature swap earlier this year (FT), and has significant potential as a “green superpower” in Africa (FT).

The question is whether President Nguema’s hold on power is sufficiently precarious for him to be forced to share national rents with other members of the Gabonese elite, or whether he will be able to hold the national economy together and invest in the long-term development of a green economy.

That’s all for this week’s closer look! Joshua will be back with the regular brief next Friday.