The Truth Behind Foreign Military Bases in Africa

In 1964, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt called for the removal of foreign military bases, and in 1970, upon rising to power, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi acted and removed all the US and UK military bases in Libya. No wonder they never forgave him!

Unlike the current African leaders, the Gaddafi’s understood the real reasons why the US, France, UK were establishing military bases in Africa. The reasons today, as then, were the same. And perhaps, the most important one of them all was revealed by arguably the most passionate pan – African to walk our continent, the great son of Africa, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah.

In his very important 1965 book: Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, this great man reflected on the phenomenon of foreign military bases in Africa, concluding, and correctly so, that: “Africa’s raw materials are an important consideration in the military build-up of the NATO countries…”

It is, therefore, no coincidence that France has its largest military presence in the Sahel, especially in the border zone linking Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger? That is where the Uranium they need to light up 1 in every 3 bulbs in France is located! It is no surprise that the US is making a return to Somalia! Somalia has huge deposits of oil and gas!

A recent example is in East Africa where the US has military bases in Kenya and 1 in Uganda. In 2007, a large discovery of oil (estimated to be 1.7 billion barrels) was made at the border of Congo and Uganda in the Lake Albert region. From that point forward, this region became heavily militarized. To put this in perspective, there is a rebel group called the Allied Democratic Force (ADF) which has been operating in Congo since early 1990s.

But on 27th January 2021, a delegation of AFRICOM officers arrived in the DRC and met with the Congolese military on matters of security cooperation. Predictably, on 10 March 2021, the US State Department designated the ADF as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’ and ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorists’, linking them to ISIS.

However, anybody who has followed the conflict in the East African region will tell you that the link with ISIS is not true. A number of local organizations and the UN Group of Experts on the DRC have publicly stated that there is no evidence to link the ADF to ISIS.

So why designate the ADF terrorists? Why link ADF to ISIS? Because that allows the US to increase its military presence in the Congo, and the Great Lakes region. Today, they concentrated in the town of Beni, North Kivu…just adjacent to the discovered oil reserves! That is all you need to know, to realize that fighting ADF is a mask.

In effect, foreign military bases are not in Africa to fight violent extremism or rebels. That is secondary, and a good excuse. If anything, violent extremism and insecurity in Africa have increased exponentially during the very years of foreign military build-up in Africa? For example, in 2010, there were just 5 active militant Islamist groups operating in Africa. Today, they are 25!

It could actually be claimed, and not without reason, that AFRICOM is behind these militant groups. Their presence creates a need for US intervention. That seemed the case at the height of the Ethiopian conflict. Then, the Commander of the US military base in Djibouti told the world that they were ready to intervene in Ethiopia. What did he mean? Is that the mandate of AFRICOM? To overthrow popular and democratic governments?

In conclusion, what we are seeing in the proliferation of US military bases in Africa, is the continuation of a neo-colonial blueprint for frustrating the realization of the two most important principles of pan-Africanism: 1) political unity and 2) territorial sovereignty.

The goal is to fragment Africa, weaken African state institutions, prevent African unity and sovereignty, and thereby assert US power to subordinate the aspirations of the continent for pan-African consolidation. The enduring presence of AFRICOM not only symbolizes the lack of unity and sovereignty; it also equally enforces the fragmentation and subordination of the African people and governments.