THE role played by Africans in supporting the Western military has always been huge. 

During both World War I and World War II, over 1.5 million African soldiers and labourers served under British and French colonial flags.

These Africans fought across Europe, Asia, and North Africa, playing a critical role in turning the tide in major campaigns. But their contributions have been minimised or even deliberately ignored.

The contribution made by Africans has morphed into a different type of exploitation or subservience.

The “relationship” has changed into not just being about African bodies but now encompasses what lays beneath the very ground on which they walk.

A number of Western powers rely heavily on African territory to project global power, conduct drone operations, and monitor the conflict zones they have often been responsible for starting.

There are dozens of military facilities across Africa, varying from large permanent bases to temporary contingency sites.

France and the United States have the largest military footprints on the continent, supplemented by forces from Britain, Germany, and Italy.

France, still clearly living in a fantasy island of its own self-importance, has the highest number of troops in Africa, even though they have been kicked out of much of the Sahel.

But the French still have boots on the ground in Djibouti, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon and Chad at the very least. It really wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they also have special forces operating in other African nations.

In any case their presence is already enough for them to think they still have influence on the continent and to interfere in the domestic affairs of a range of sovereign nations.

The US, of course, will never allow its own greed to be outdone by the French or any other country.

We know, from official data, that the US has one primary, permanent hub and dozens of smaller security co-operation or logistical outposts across the continent.

The permanent base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti is its primary base in Africa. This is supported by other bases: Manda Bay and Mombasa in Kenya, Entebbe in Uganda, Ghana and temporary co-operative security locations across the Sahel, west Africa, and the Horn.

Britain has its own network of interference posts across the continent. Five bases in Kenya, another in Djibouti plus other posts in Somalia and Nigeria.

The Western boots on the ground across Africa are there to support the interests of the former colonial powers and the US.

But it is Africa’s vast natural resources that draw the biggest interest from Western powers.

The importance of these resources extends beyond their abundance.

The resources that are required to feed the Western military industrial complex are in great supply across the continent.

In a turbulent world, this scarcity heightens Africa’s role as a key player in geopolitics.

Not surprisingly, Africa’s mineral-rich areas often overlap with its most conflict-prone regions, as in Sudan and the Great Lakes region. This is nothing new.

During the colonial period, European powers extracted African resources with zero regard for the locals. In fact, for the Western powers the role of local people was, and still is, to work in almost slave-like conditions to extract the materials.

Colonial administrations operated extractive economies in which raw materials, such as gold, rubber and oil, were shipped to European metropoles, leaving African colonies underdeveloped and politically fragmented.

The resources available in Africa are often reduced to the horrors of children extracting cobalt with the most rudimentary of tools in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2024, Nato published a list of 12 defence-critical raw materials essential for the military industrial complex. These materials are integral to the manufacture of advanced defence systems and equipment.

Aluminium, for example, is pivotal in producing lightweight yet robust military aircraft and missiles, enhancing their agility and performance.

Graphite is crucial for the production of main battle tanks and corvettes due to its high strength and thermal stability.

In submarines, graphite is used in the construction of hulls and other structural components, significantly reducing acoustic signatures and enhancing stealth capabilities.

Cobalt is another critical material, essential for producing superalloys used in jet engines, missiles, and submarines, which can withstand extreme temperatures and stress.

The availability and secure supply of these materials are vital to the Western military. 
Disruptions in their supply could impact the production of essential defence equipment. This means a key role the Western military is to protect this resource pipeline.

The full list of Nato identified materials are aluminium, beryllium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, lithium, manganese, platinum, Rare Earth Elements, titanium and tungsten.

These are all materials that can be found in abundance across the African continent.
The next question for any nation wanting these materials is how to get them out of the ground and shipped to where they are required — all at minimal cost and with the least amount of political grief.

For the Western powers, the assistance of (mis)leaders across the continent is essential.
Many of these (mis)leaders have been supported financially and militarily to do the bidding of the Western powers at the expense of their own populations.

These characters amass great wealth whilst most people in their countries struggle to survive in the informal economy — getting by from day to day.

In many parts of Africa, the informal economy, where people have no security and sell or give whatever service they can to survive, accounts for up to 90 per cent of the economy.

Basically, if you don’t work, you don’t eat.

Cheap or even slave labour is vital for the extraction of these materials from under the very feet of Africans to keep the Western war machine going.

The (mis)leaders are vital to smooth the way for these minerals to be exported for refining and production into killing tools. The minimal or tax-free regimes offered by these criminals to Western military companies is also a vital element in the seemingly never-ending benefits available to the already super rich.

These are the very same super rich who control the corporate media. The organs they control are central to creating the lie that the main problem in the world is working-class people receiving scant benefits or wanting to come to where you are to take what you have.

Thankfully, we are seeing more and more of these (mis)leaders being turfed out on their ears — as we witnessed in the Sahel nations.

But we are also seeing more of these criminals finding new ways to hang on to power — for example by abolishing full mandate presidential elections.

The new arrangements increasingly are allowing parliaments, stuffed with supporters of the president, changing the rules so the presidency is decided by the legislative body rather than the people.

These are all real challenges that must all feed into our thoughts about how to thwart the warmongers across the globe.

When we talk about the solidarity needed to build an international movement against war it is vital that we include the 1.4 billion people of the African continent in that debate.

More so, they must also be part of the process of building that international movement for peace and not an afterthought.