In January 2023, French troops who had been stationed in Mali for a decade as part of Operation Barkhane were asked to leave. In August 2023, following a military coup, Niger’s new junta expelled the French ambassador and demanded the withdrawal of French military forces. By the end of 2023, France had lost its military presence across the core of the Sahel — Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso — that it had maintained for over a century.
Into the gaps left by France came Wagner Group forces, now operating as the Africa Corps under the Russian defense ministry’s umbrella. Into the broader diplomatic vacuum came Turkish diplomatic missions, Gulf state investment funds, Chinese development banks, and American AFRICOM recalibrations. The contest for influence in Africa has reached an intensity not seen since the Cold War — and Africa’s position within it has changed in ways that the old framework of “great power competition” does not fully capture.
Africa is not a passive object in this competition. For the first time in its post-colonial history, it has enough options — enough competing suitors — to make meaningful strategic choices rather than simply accepting the terms that outside powers dictate.
Why Africa Matters Now
Africa’s strategic importance has multiple dimensions, and they are intensifying simultaneously.
Demographics: Africa’s population is approximately 1.5 billion today and is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2050 and 4 billion by 2100 — roughly half of all global population growth for the rest of the century. This demographic reality creates both the largest emerging consumer market in the world and, if development proceeds, the largest potential labour force. For companies, economies, and governments planning beyond 2030, Africa’s demographic trajectory is not optional context — it is central.
Critical minerals: The clean energy transition requires vast quantities of cobalt, lithium, manganese, nickel, and rare earth elements that are concentrated in African geology. The Democratic Republic of Congo holds more than 70% of global cobalt reserves. Zimbabwe and the DRC have significant lithium deposits. South Africa holds the majority of platinum group metals. Morocco holds more than half of global phosphate reserves. As the world races to decarbonize, control over or access to these resources is a genuine strategic priority.
Food and land: Africa holds approximately 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land — a resource that looks increasingly valuable in a world of growing food demand, climate-stressed agriculture elsewhere, and geopolitical food security concerns. Gulf state sovereign wealth funds, Chinese state-owned enterprises, and private investors have all pursued large-scale African land and agricultural acquisitions in the past decade.
Trade routes: Africa’s coastlines flank the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the South Atlantic — among the most strategically important maritime corridors in the world. Military access to African ports and basing rights is a significant prize in a world of intensifying naval competition.
The Powers and Their Strategies
China has been the most systematically engaged. Since the early 2000s, China’s Belt and Road Initiative channeled hundreds of billions of dollars into African infrastructure — roads, railways, ports, power plants, telecoms — through state-backed loans to African governments. The model was criticized in Western media for creating “debt traps” — a characterization that was partially accurate (several African governments have taken on unsustainable debt loads) and partially a motivated framing (Chinese infrastructure financing filled a gap that Western capital markets and development banks were not filling). China has also become the dominant player in African extractive industries, mining contracts, and telecommunications infrastructure, with Huawei’s networks running across much of the continent.
Russia’s return to Africa is more recent and more opportunistic. Wagner/Africa Corps forces have established themselves as security providers in the coup-affected Sahel states — Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Libya, Central African Republic, Sudan — trading security services for mining concessions and political influence. Russia’s African engagement is lighter on development and heavier on military and political leverage than China’s, and its economic model involves resource extraction contracts rather than infrastructure investment.
France, following the Sahel expulsions, is undertaking a painful reckoning with the model that defined its Africa policy for decades. The Françafrique — the system of political and economic relationships that gave France privileged access to its former colonies in exchange for political support and military protection — has been visibly delegitimized. France is attempting to recast its African relationships on more equal terms, but the credibility deficit created by decades of patronizing relationships, support for authoritarian governments, and perceived exploitation is not easily overcome.
The United States has Africa Command (AFRICOM) and significant diplomatic engagement but has long treated Africa primarily through the lens of counterterrorism and health security (via PEPFAR and other programs) rather than strategic competition. The Biden administration’s 2022 US Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa represented an attempt to treat Africa as a strategic partner rather than a development recipient, but US engagement remains thinner and more episodic than China’s.
Turkey has pursued an expanding African strategy since the early 2010s, opening embassies across the continent, building mosques and schools through the Diyanet, deploying drone technology and military training, and promoting Turkish business investment. Turkish trade with Africa has grown several-fold. Turkey is building relationships — particularly with Somali governments, Sahel states, and East African countries — that give it diplomatic weight well beyond its economic size.
Gulf states — particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia — are pursuing African engagement primarily through investment funds, port development (DP World operates major African ports from Djibouti to Dakar), agricultural land acquisition, and diplomatic alignment in the context of their regional security competitions with Turkey, Iran, and each other.
Africa’s Leverage — and Its Limits
The competition among external powers has created something unprecedented: genuine leverage for African governments in their external relationships.
When France was the dominant power in the Sahel, the governments of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso had limited alternatives if they wanted security assistance, development finance, or diplomatic cover. The arrival of Russian, Chinese, Turkish, and Gulf alternatives means that African governments can, to a degree, play suitors off against each other. This is visible in the hard bargaining that has characterized African negotiations with the IMF, in the competitive dynamics that have driven down Chinese loan terms in several countries, and in the diplomatic flexibility African governments exercise on issues (like the Ukraine war) where outside powers have attempted to demand alignment.
But Africa’s leverage has real limits. The internal governance challenges that make many African states vulnerable to external pressure — corruption, weak institutions, ethnic and regional tensions exploited by outside powers, food insecurity — have not disappeared. Great power competition does not automatically translate into development. Wagner forces in Mali provided security of a kind — primarily against specific insurgent groups, while committing atrocities against civilians — but did not build roads, schools, or economic capacity. External competition for African alignment tends to be most favorable to African governments when it aligns with domestic development goals; when it does not, the money and the influence flow without delivering durable benefits to populations.
The African Union’s Agenda 2063 — its fifty-year continental development vision — articulates an aspiration for African agency in the global system that is genuinely inspiring. Converting it from vision to reality requires institutional development, continental economic integration, and governance quality that remain works in progress across much of the continent.
The Stakes
Africa’s trajectory over the next thirty years is one of the most consequential uncertainties in global affairs.
The optimistic trajectory — successful demographic dividend, expanding middle class, continental economic integration under the African Continental Free Trade Area, democratic consolidation — produces a continent that is a major pole of global economic dynamism, a significant voice in multilateral institutions, and a stabilizing force in its region.
The pessimistic trajectory — governance failures, climate disruption of agricultural systems, debt distress, internal conflicts fed by resource competition and great power meddling — produces the world’s largest humanitarian challenge, massive migration pressures, and a continent whose demographic weight amplifies instability rather than generating prosperity.
Which trajectory prevails will be shaped partly by African choices and partly by what the competing external powers choose to do — whether they genuinely support development or primarily extract resources and political alignment. The current moment, in which Africa has more options than at any previous point in its post-colonial history, is an opportunity that its governments, institutions, and populations will have to convert into genuine strategic autonomy.
Also explore:
The Return of Great Power Competition
Climate Migration Crisis: 200 Million Displaced by 2050 (published July 7)
BRICS Expansion: The New World Order the West Refuses to See (published July 14)
Water Wars: The Next Resource Conflict Will Be Over Drinking Water (coming August 17)
Sources & Further Reading
- World Bank — Military expenditure (% of GDP) — comparable defence burden for every country and year.
- SIPRI — Military Expenditure Database — consistent military spending series by country since 1949.
- Uppsala Conflict Data Program — Datasets — the standard dataset on organised violence and armed conflict.
- Council on Foreign Relations — Global Conflict Tracker — interactive mapping of active conflicts and their strategic stakes.
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About the Author
António Monteiro
Engineer by profession, geopolitical analyst by conviction. I believe responsibility for the planet's future doesn't belong only to governments and institutions - it belongs to all of us. Knowledge about geopolitics, international conflicts, and the forces shaping the world is the most powerful tool for becoming more conscious, informed citizens. You don't need to be a diplomat to understand what's at stake - you just need to want to go beyond the headlines. At Outside The Case, I analyze conflicts, power dynamics, and global trends with rigor and accessible language, so you can understand what's really happening in the world.
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