August 29, 2023: On July 26th the central African nation of Niger experienced a military takeover of the government. This was condemned by just about every government in Africa and beyond. The only American military presence in Niger are two UAV bases, one in central Niger called Base 201, and a smaller Base 101 in the southwest outside the Niger capital of Niamey. The two bases are operated by about a thousand American military, mainly air force, personnel. Base 201 has been operational since 2019 and is mainly used for long-range surveillance UAVs or similar UAVs armed with guided missiles. Those UAVs have been essential to monitoring the growing Islamic terrorism in Africa.

There are a lot of corrupt elected governments in Africa and the local military leaders often try to deal with the corruption by taking over the government, purportedly trying to reduce the corruption and then allow democracy to return. That rarely works as the corruption is extensive, persistent, resistant to reform and that includes the occasional military coup. Experience has shown that a military coup is rarely effective at fixing anything and usually makes matters worse because most African nations oppose military governments and refuse to support or cooperate with them when they occur in a nearby country. There is a similar response by foreign aid donors, who halt aid until democracy is restored.

Foreign aid is crucial in Africa because corruption limits the amount of money governments can spend on essential infrastructure, health or food aid programs. That means, when a coup takes place, the new military government finds itself isolated, criticized and denied most forms of foreign aid or cooperation. In Niger that meant the air space over Niger was closed and surrounding nations closed their borders with Niger. The coup leaders are isolated, criticized and left with few options other than abandoning their effort to make their version of local government work. Some military governments last for years by creating a plausible, to most of the locals, external threat. Their neighbors and foreign aid donors usually quickly denounce this fiction.

During the Cold War unelected governments could keep the aid coming by playing off the Western and communist donors against each other. After the Cold War ended in 1991, the only donors left were Western democracies. Dictatorships tend to be much less affluent and unable to provide much aid to anyone. Such an environment is common throughout Africa, especially where there are valuable raw materials that generate even more corruption. Niger does not have any valuable natural resources and must import more than it exports. This imbalance is made possible by lots of foreign aid. When there is a coup, the food, medical and similar aid generally continues unless the new government tries to steal the aid.

The current Niger coup has shut down American military operations because air space has been closed by neighboring countries that do not permit legal aircraft operations into or out of Niger. This is what has put the two American air bases at risk of being shut down permanently. Before the coup, Niger was considered one of the more stable African countries foreign air forces could operate out of. There are about 2,000 American and French military personnel in Niger and the longer the coup continues the more likely those troops will be withdrawn.

American UAV bases in Niger have been operational since 2019. The Niger government gave American and French UAVs operating in or over Niger permission to carry Hellfire missiles and other guided weapons inside Niger. For the most part this means U.S. and French MQ-9 Reaper UAVs operating from existing bases in Niger, Mali and Djibouti. France also operates manned combat aircraft from bases in Mali. EU peacekeepers also operate armed UAVs and helicopters in northern Mali. Initially there were only about 800 U.S. troops in Niger, most of them maintaining the aerial surveillance UAVs and other aircraft and helping train Niger troops. Then there was an incident where four American Special Forces soldiers were killed when the training exercise (a large patrol) they were supervising clashed with Islamic terrorists operating near the Mali border. Four of the Niger troops were killed as well and even more American and Niger troops were wounded. This led Niger to allow armed UAVs to operate in Niger. In the past there had not been many situations calling for rapid response by armed aircraft. The early Special Forces incident made it clear the situation had changed. Before that it was possible to get foreign aircraft to come and carry out an air strike but the process took time. The Niger and American troops were not expecting to encounter such a large force of Islamic terrorists and having armed UAVs on call would have made a big difference.

This problem is largely the result of the success of French counter-terror operations in Mali and the defeat of Boko Haram in Nigeria. In both cases many of the surviving Islamic terrorists fled to Niger. This has been going on for some time and Niger has responded by allowing in more and more foreign assistance.

In 2016 construction began on a new U.S. AFRICOM (Africa Command) base in Agadez, Niger, 730 kilometers northeast of the capital (Niamey). The U.S. had received permission for such a base in 2014, a year after American UAVs began operating from a Niger base next to the Niamey airport. The new Agadez base was built largely from scratch because, unlike Niamey, Agadez does not have a large airport or much in the way of support for lots of aircraft operations. Agadez is closer to Chad, southern Libya and Nigeria, where American aerial surveillance is more in demand by the local governments. The U.S. shares intelligence obtained by the Niger-based UAVs with Niger and other nations in the area that have intelligence sharing agreements as well as with France, which leads the counter-terrorism effort in the region.

Since 2013 France has operated a counter-terrorism operation throughout the Sahel (the semi-desert area south of the desert that stretches across northern Africa) using about 4,000 French troops based mainly in Mali. About the same time work began on the Agadez base, France and other European nations helped form the G5 Sahel Joint Force consisting of 5,000 troops from Sahel nations Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. The G5 force is mainly concerned with Islamic terror groups in the Sahel.

Agadez is the second American airbase in Africa and, like the first one, shared with France and other allies. The first U.S. base was established in 2002 when the United States began sharing an old French base in Djibouti (the northwestern neighbor of Somalia). Since then, Djibouti has hosted the one official U.S. military base (Camp Lemonnier) in Africa. France and the United States SOCOM (Special Operations Command) have had special operations forces (commandos and special aircraft) outside the Djibouti capital since 2002. In 2014 the U.S. signed another ten year lease for that base. At that point U.S. forces in Djibouti were monitoring what was going on in the region (mainly Somalia and Yemen but also Eritrea, Nigeria, Mali, Libya, Kenya, and Ethiopia) but not interfering with the local terrorists. Not much, anyway. The Djibouti base also supported operations throughout the Sahel and did this with a dozen or so MQ-9s plus manned aircraft like the U-28, F-15Es and various maritime surveillance aircraft in addition to a growing number of other foreign aircraft.

Since 2007 the United States has created and expanded AFRICOM to manage all the increasingly numerous American military operations in Africa. Since most of these operations involved special operations forces rather than conventional military forces AFRICOM released little detail on what was where. But in the last few years more of these details have emerged. As suspected most of the fifty or so AFRICOM “bases' ' are temporary agreements to use existing civilian or military air bases or other facilities in African nations, usually ones where AFRICOM is providing assistance in dealing with Islamic terrorist activity or other security threats. Most of these facilities are considered temporary or “contingent” (just arrangements to use an airbase or port facility if needed and on short notice). The permanent operations are bases or FOS (Forward Operating Sites) while the temporary sites are CSLs (cooperative security locations) where American and local forces operate together or CLs (contingency locations) where arrangements have been made for use if needed. About half the AFRICOM sites are CLs and not used by Americans on a regular basis.

AFRICOM is similar in organization to other commands (CENTCOM, for the Middle East, and SOUTHCOM, for Latin America, etc). Before AFRICOM was created those operations were coordinated between two other commands (the one covering Europe and the one covering Latin America). The establishment of AFRICOM means more money for counter-terror operations in Africa and more long range projects. No country in Africa had sufficient infrastructure for AFRICOM headquarters and few wanted to risk the political blowback from hosting a major American military headquarters.