As the African residents and the African migrants of this board have little interest in their continent, it is time to bring news, especially as the situation, from a certain perspective, is funny.
Welcome, welcome.
Summary: as it was underlined in another post, Russia's presence in Western Africa is mostly caused by a trade dispute.
Russia is a full partner to European nations and as such, exerted their potential as a full partner by shutting down supply in gas. Making it an unreliable trade partner for Europeans.
More reliable partners could be found in Africa as they will be not be considered as full partners. Supply will flow out.
Europe has projects to extract gas from the lower part of Western Africa, pipelines and all.
Russia is in this part of the world to ensure they are associated to a future project.
Various coups happened in the area, endangering the project of pipelines as security is jeopardized.
So far, all coups were mostly done in association with Russia.
Yet the lastest one, in Niger, is probably the only native one. No foreign power has its hands in it. Which turned the situation in a total mess.
The coup neither benefits Europe, nor the US, nor Russia (and probably nor China)
It was performed by people who understood the situation and wanted their share.
As it is performed without the back up of a foreign power, crushing it is a first priority emergency.
So an assembly of western african countries has determined military intervention.
Only three countries out of 15 will participate.
So war may be coming to Western Africa.
The involved countries: Obviously, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria, Chad plus two irrelevant nations.
Niger: is involved as the coup nation.
Burkina Faso, Mali: are involved as support to the coup nation, as they themselves led coups at home.
Nigeria: is involved as a liberal driven nation. Nigeria's large population (over 200 million people) ensure liberals may be found among them. Which means they consider as enrichment the export of gas instead of striving to use it to develop Nigeria. The bigger the exports, the bigger the stipends.
Nigeria has tremendous issues of capital and had to concentrate wealth in the hands of one man in order to achieve the funding of a 15 billion USD oil refinery project. No public way (taxation) or private way (shareholding) was found to raise that sum out of a 200 million population.
Showing by the way that the Apartheid was unneeded.
Chad:is involved on the ground of war alone. Chad was turned by liberals in the African Afghanistan (even if in the case of Afghanistan, the situation existed prior their arrival), that is a country that is organized around war. War provides opportunities to capture people and collect ransoms type of things.
Algeria: is involved as a potential connection to the pipeline. In competition with Morocco for the spot, an involvement in the war would help to secure the position.
Already a joyous mess.
Non African nations:
European nations: while the free press laments the loss of uranium supply, up to 25 per cent of the global, it carefully hides the gas problem. That being stated, Europe would largely prefer a junior partner to whom all can be dictated and a few euros here and there are enough to grease the cogs and wheels.
They are pushing behind a coalition of the willing in order to subdue the local initiative.
The US: have since the war against Irad the project to shape the whole strio going from the Middle East to Western Africa to ease the extraction of resources. No local initiative is welcome.
Russia: is placed between a hard place and a rock. The coup was done with no foreign support, meaning liberal nations are in a good position to crush it. Will be involved through Burkina Faso and Mali.
The military intervention will require UN approval. Again, Russia is expected to veto the initiative.
Tough position.
A joyous mess.
Outcome: war is unlikely. Cash will be dropped. If the dudes are too greedy (collecting a right of passage over the pipeline will be way more lucrative short, mid and long term than the brown envelope), driven by nationalist concerns, assassination from within.