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After Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, this time it feels like it’s personal. France’s president took on all-comers in his annual address on Monday to his ambassadors in Paris: insisting his man in Niamey is staying put, defying an ultimatum from Niger’s coup leaders and ruing what Emmanuel Macron sees as wavering on the part of European and US allies.
Both France and the United States have troops stationed in Niger as part of the fight against jihadist insurgents. We ask about their differing approaches to a coup that’s got President Mohamed Bazoum under house arrest. How effectively can France fight the narrative fuelled by Russia of a meddling former colonial power that’s to blame for Niger’s current ills?
The outcome matters, both to citizens of one of the world’s poorest nations and to neighbours wary of continued coup contagion. Talk last month of a West African regional intervention has mostly gone quiet. So what will break the impasse?
Prepared by François Picard, Juliette Laurain, Lauren Bain and Imen Mellaz.
