The African Diaspora in Turmoil: Focus on West Africa

Reader’s guide (2-minute overview): This essay argues that anti-Black racism is sustained by global systems of extraction and narrative control, and that West Africa’s current crises, from Libya’s collapse to Sahel insurgencies and the AES rupture with ECOWAS, must be read through sovereignty, resource politics, and the selective enforcement of “human rights” concerns.

The moral vacuum

There is barely a valid expression that adequately defines the moral vacuum of the Western paradigm that automatically shields the debilitating racism suppressing Black communities around the world.

The point of contention is not the failure of language, but the fiendish mechanism of suppression engineered to remain hidden while expanding the racial hierarchy defined by Europeans in the 18^th century. That mechanism is a structural feature of systems designed to extract Black labor, to consume Black culture, police Black mobility, and punish Black resistance. Decades after the U.S. Federal Government began keeping records, the resulting inequality is seen as natural, cultural, or unfortunate, but inevitable.

The system denies Black people their humanity while also depriving them economically, culturally, and politically. The words may seem incredulous and contrived; however, the facts paint a devastating picture. Yet, vocalizing moral outrage elicits violent reactions or an automatic retort, such as “All Lives Matter,” which sprang up immediately alongside the Black Lives Matter call for justice. The overwhelming facts are of the horrendous plight of Black life, forced into a chasm-like space, far below the global mean, without any accountability. The evidence, though glaring, remains blatantly ignored. Racism is defended.

Sovereignty under pressure in Africa

Amid the racial imbalance in the Black Diaspora, Africa has the most glaring violations of Black African sovereignty.

• In Libya, public outrage across Africa remained muted as reports of enslavement and trafficking emerged in the years after Gaddafi’s capture and death (2011). Libya’s collapse, shaped by NATO action under a UN civilian-protection mandate, also sent shockwaves into the Sahel, intensifying displacement and insecurity in some of the world’s poorest countries.
• In Nigeria, Boko Haram expanded amid grave security failures. The group abducted schoolgirls, attacked villages, and trafficked weapons across borders. The insurgency has caused over 35,000 deaths and displaced millions, destabilizing a nation of about 241 million. During the 2023 Niger crisis, Tinubu, speaking as ECOWAS chair, supported threats of intervention to restore President Mohamed Bazoum, who had been detained since the coup.
• In Sudan, the civil war has reached catastrophic levels. Estimates cited in open-source reporting describe mass killings documented through satellite analysis as a “slaughterhouse”. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which emerged from forces implicated in Darfur-era atrocities, have been accused of severe abuses. While Sudan starves and bleeds, critics note that the RSF has financed itself through gold exports tied to external buyers, including in the UAE. In contrast, Human Rights Watch has recently focused attention on Burkina Faso’s military command amid years of violence in the Sahel—an emphasis that appears to be selective.

AES, ECOWAS, and the resource question

In 2023, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES). The alliance presented itself as a defensive bulwark against threats of ECOWAS intervention and what it viewed as continued foreign domination, following years of worsening insecurity.

Each AES state faces serious insurgencies where fighters can blend into civilian life, and local conflict dynamics are aggravated by external interests. France, an early leader in the 2011 Libya intervention alongside Britain and the United States, later became the central Western partner in Sahel counterterrorism, but relations collapsed as Sahel governments accused France of maintaining a protectorate-style posture. In Niger, critics argue that long-running uranium arrangements involving Orano (formerly Areva) disproportionately benefited French industry and corporate shareholders, even as Niger struggled with low electricity access and broader development needs.

The most vocal and militaristic responses to the AES’s bid for relief and the restoration of its sovereignty came from the most prominent West African states and ECOWAS members. Nigeria’s President Tinubu threatened intervention even before considering the facts and the acute challenge of facing a combined landmass approximately three times the size of Texas, with a population of roughly 71 million, many of whom support sovereignty. The AES countries hold significant deposits of gold and uranium, as well as prospective lithium and untapped oil and gas, making the region a prime target for imperialist powers. These facts remained unrecognized by ECOWAS, whose main thrust is to follow the Western paradigm.

Benin as a case study

The acute need to break free of Western imperialism to survive means nothing to the colonized mind that embraces the Western Operating System. The Republic of Benin, with its port city of Cotonou decorated to display its wealth, betrays a blindness to external agitation as the nation bowed to French determination to throttle the AES. Benin’s leader, Patrice Talon, did not hesitate to close the border and the Port of Cotonou in support of France and ECOWAS’s strategies to economically squeeze Niger’s government. His excuse was that the AES caused the problem of displaced people crossing his border. He showed no effort to work with the AES to stop the incursions, although the AES also suffers from terrorist attacks, and both would have benefited from cooperation.

The Sahel and the abutting nations suffer from external powers funding terrorists specifically to disrupt the regional economies and allow total exploitation of natural resources. Talon’s move to punish Niger was equivalent to destroying a vibrant trade that accounted for 80% of Niger’s imports, according to the World Bank. Additionally, Beninese farmers faced a loss of their primary market as their president deprived the nation of transit fees on oil and other goods totaling about $7 million daily.

The key point is that much of Benin’s wealth available for its development came from cooperation with its fellow Africans. Its link with Niger was a fragile yet functioning intercontinental trade route, typically destroyed in Africa since the Atlantic Slave Trade. Prior to that, regional cooperation was the African tradition that made the region, including the Mali and Songhai Empires, the wealthiest in the world.

Historically, the close cooperation among African people was the first casualty of the Atlantic Slave Trade, as European armies destroyed intercontinental trade and forced dependence on Europe’s disposable goods in exchange for slaves. It is a calamity that the African world continues to simmer in turmoil, engineered through the ethics of the Slave Trade. As a deprived world fights for respect for sovereignty and the dismantling of Western dominance, Africa, it seems, insists on dependence and offers its people as sacrifices to the ill-intentioned Capitalist billionaires from foreign lands. Across the Diaspora, institutions built on the ethics of slavery continue to treat Black communities as expendable populations. While Benin’s 2025 GDP per capita is around $1635, its financial agreements with France deprive the country of badly needed foreign reserves. Yet, by remaining in ECOWAS, it, along with Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, is a key player in Africa’s destruction of its sovereignty.

Key takeaways

• The essay’s central claim is that anti-Black racism is maintained through extraction, narrative control, and selective moral outrage.
• Libya’s collapse is presented as a pivotal shock that intensified Sahel insecurity and displacement.
• AES is framed as a sovereignty project shaped by insurgency, sanctions pressure, and distrust of ECOWAS and France.
• Benin’s border and port closures are argued to have amplified regional hardship by disrupting a critical Niger trade corridor.
• A call for renewed regional cooperation to resist external leverage and rebuild African economic integration.