DR. ARIKANA: WE MUST SUPPORT BURKINA FASO, MALI & NIGER

Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger aren’t just reshaping West Africa but threatening the very foundations of Western dominance.

Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao (@hedrarikana on IG / @ADDIMovement on X), a former African Union Permanent Representative to the United States, made fiery remarks on 31 October 2024 at the University of Cape Town about the African revolution underway.

Chihombori-Quao celebrated the growing movement against imperialism, starting with a 2020 people-backed coup d’état in Mali, the first African country to expel French military forces in recent years. This revolution spread like wildfire to Burkina Faso and Niger, where people-backed coups in 2022 and 2023 also severed military ties with France. On 6 July 2024, the three states formed a confederation, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). It shares a foreign policy, military force, plans for economic integration and the goal of forming a unified Pan-African federal state free from Western manipulation.

The AES is also developing a currency to end reliance on France’s CFA franc.

The 14 French-speaking countries in Africa that use the CFA franc were required to place 50 per cent of their reserves in the French treasury in Paris, a neocolonial arrangement only partially loosened in 2019. However, France has de facto veto power at the two central banks that manage the respective CFA franc currencies for West Africa and Central Africa, and the currency is tied to the Euro at a rate historically determined by France. These factors grant France cheap access to raw materials from Africa while maintaining an overseas market for finished French goods.

The AES can be described as a ‘liberated zone,’ a term coined by Ghana’s first leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-72), to mean where ‘genuine independence was secured through [...] a positive action movement representing the majority of the population under the leadership of an anti-imperialist and well-organised mass party [and] a puppet regime was overthrown by a people’s movement...' and a social revolution is underway.

Video credit: @onpixel.livestream (YouTube)

Sources

https://anec-niger.ne/download/declaration-de-niamey-sommet-aes/

https://roape.net/2017/05/18/cfa-franc-french-monetary-imperialism-africa/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z6HsLJ8mmAlObEosu96-yaCqBKdXuqXg/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HYg-p3JemFV4szjOIqrdWSsCLT1ZzF8u/view?usp=sharing

(page 43-44)

https://ambafrance.org/Monetary-cooperation-between-Africa-and-France-the-CFA-franc

https://www.mincom.gov.gh/operating-mines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clazIcpTW8g