Army seizes power in Gabon

Ali Bongo, the deposed president of Gabon, appeared in a video today under home arrest, urging “friends all over the world” to “make noise” on his behalf, as the resource-rich West African nation he rules over looks set to become the latest to fall into the hands of a military junta.

If successful, the coup currently unfolding in Gabon would be the eighth in one of Africa’s former French colonies in three years, coming just weeks after members of Niger’s presidential guard overthrew the President Mohamed Bazoum, a close French ally.

Minutes after Gabon’s election body announced Ali Bongo had won a third term in office, a group of senior Gabonese military officers swept in to attempt to end his family’s 56-year hold on power. Appearing on national television, they declared they were cancelling the results of the “fraudulent” election, closing borders and putting forward the head of the presidential guard as the leader of the transition.

Hundreds of supporters took to the streets of Gabon’s capital, Libreville, to celebrate an end to the Bongo family dynasty. Critics say Bongo, 64, and his father who ruled before him, have run the country as their private property, doing little to share its oil and mining wealth with its population of 2.3 million, a third of whom live in poverty.

France, meanwhile, has condemned the overthrow of another ally, educated in Paris from the age of nine.

The fall of another friendly government to a coup is a further setback for Paris, and points to growing Anti-french sentiment in West and Central Africa.

If other recent coups in the region are anything to go by, then a new Gabon military government is likely to adopt an openly hostile position towards France, tapping into local resentment about the former colonial power’s ongoing influence in the region.

The resentment is understandable. As Reaction’s Editorial Board wrote recently, France continues to exploit its former African countries by, for instance, controlling the CFA Franc. This currency, used in Gabon, deprives France’s former African colonies of sovereignty in monetary policy and results in them channelling more money to France than they receive in aid.

Nations such as Russia and China have been only too happy to further their own influence in the region by actively promoting anti-colonial sentiments about French dominance. As Idris Mohammed and Olumba Ezenwa write in Reaction today, the Wagner Group has promoted Kemi Seba, an influential Pan-Africanist figure, now living in Moscow, who has gained celebrity status through his TV talk show where he frequently challenges France’s “neo-colonial oppression on the African continent”.

The overthrow of Ali Bongo in Gabon will do little to repair Franco-African relations. 

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