Written by Michael Thervil
We know that you might be taken back by the headline of this article but honestly there is no other way to put it. For nearly 500 years France has colonized various countries in Africa which include 14 countries; and those countries are as follows:
Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
Of these 14 countries that France colonized, there has been a total of at least 67 coups in the last 50 years. The question is why? One answer could be of the often-rigged elections that tend to happen within these countries. Another reason could also be the fact that the French would not only pay off the leadership in those countries, but they would also act as hyper-predatory loan sharks to those countries. Meaning that the French will insidiously provide loans to these countries in which they knew that these countries couldn’t pay and then when those countries would default on their loans, they would extract the natural resources of those countries as a method of payment. When the French would do this, it would leave those countries in a perpetual cycle of debt and repayment. When this happens, it leaves the ordinary people of those countries perpetually poor with no way out of poverty.
Oftentimes, the French would flat out seize or take the natural resources of those countries by force and claim it as their own. Furthermore, throughout Frances’s history in the Sahel region of Africa, they either coerced people or forced people into labor to extract the natural resources from their country once they fell into France's debt trap. But now, it looks like the people of the Sahel region of Africa which stretches from the east to west coast of the continent and consist of at least 10 entire counties and the boarders of several others are starting to rise and not allow themselves to latterly keep getting socio-economically raped by the French and other industrialized nations in the region.
Many people around the world never thought that they would see the day and simply can’t believe what they are seeing in Africa. Yes, there have been coups in Africa before, but this contagious series of coups can be considered a game changer. The reason for this is because it has come about as a surprise to both the leadership of the countries involved as well as surprise to France. The coup that started in Niger has quickly spread to its other countries in Africa such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, and now Gabon – with no end in sight.
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