Washington trades military support to Sahel juntas for access to mineral wealth

Under President Donald Trump, the United States has quietly recalibrated its Sahel strategy, trading military support to West African juntas battling jihadists for lucrative access to the region’s vast mineral wealth, experts say. The strategy marks a stark shift from the Biden administration’s aid freeze amid coups, signaling a new era of transactional diplomacy as Washington seeks to counter Russian and Chinese influence in Africa.


Issued on: 25/08/2025 -
By: FRANCE 24

Miners hold stones that contains lithium in a mining site in Gidan Kwano, in Nasarawa state, on January 23, 2025. © Olympia de Maismon, AFP


Under President Donald Trump the United States has reset relations with west Africa's military leaders on a mutual back-scratching basis, bartering help fighting jihadists for the Sahel region's mining riches, experts say.

While Joe Biden was in office the US suspended most of the development and military aid it sent to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the wake of the rash of coups that brought juntas to power in the three restive countries between 2020 and 2023.

Trump's return to the White House has shifted the US away from that stance, as part of a wider pivot in Washington's African foreign policy and its attempts to counter Russia and China's influence on the continent.

"Trade, not aid ... is now truly our policy for Africa," Troy Fitrell, the State Department's top official for African affairs, told an audience in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in May.

In recent weeks several other senior American figures have paid visits to the capitals of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which have all been struggling to root out jihadists linked to al Qaeda or the Islamic State group for more than a decade.

In early July, Rudolph Atallah, a security and counterterrorism adviser to Trump, visited Mali to offer the "American solution" for the unrest.

"We have the necessary equipment, the intelligence and the forces to stand up to this menace. If Mali decides to work with us, we'll know what to do," Atallah was quoted as saying by the country's state newspaper.

Several days later, William B. Stevens, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for West Africa, likewise raised the possibility of private American investment in the anti-jihadist fight to an audience in the Malian capital Bamako, after stop-offs in Ouagadougou and Niamey.

"Washington offered to kill the leaders of jihadist groups, in exchange for access to lithium and gold for American businesses," said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank affiliated with Germany's conservative CDU party.

Trump has brought US access to key minerals front and centre of his negotiations with foreign countries, including in his attempts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and the long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lithium, gold, uranium

Mali is among Africa's top producers of gold and lithium, a key component in the electric car batteries necessary for the transition to a low-carbon economy in the age of climate change.

Burkina Faso likewise possesses rich veins of gold, while Niger's uranium deposits make the desert nation among the world's top exporters of the radioactive metal.

Although all three Sahel juntas came to power while promising the people greater control and sovereignty over their country's mineral wealth, the officers in charge have welcomed Washington's change in tack.

"We have to look at investment, the potential of our countries," said Mali's Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop in July, hailing "today's convergence of viewpoints between the American administration and the government of Mali".

Laessing argued that "some officials in the State Department, worried about the end of USAID and the closure of embassies, pointed out Mali's rich resources to the Trump administration as a way to encourage it to remain engaged and keep the American embassy in Bamako open, at a point where Russia and China are expanding their influence in the region."

But for Liam Karr, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, any critical minerals deal would be "a much longer-term project".

"The terrorism threat is the biggest issue ... stabilising the region is key to any investment hopes," Karr argued.

'American mercenaries'

Washington's courting of the Sahel states comes despite the juntas pivoting towards Russia, having cut ties with the West and former imperial ruler France in particular since the coups.

Moscow has sent mercenaries from the infamous Wagner paramilitary organisation, and its successor the Africa Corps, to help the Sahel countries' armies push back the jihadists.

After Niger nationalised the local branch of French uranium giant Orano, the Kremlin, which commands the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, said it wished to mine the radioactive metal in the west African country itself.

So far, Russia's foothold in the region has yet to provoke the White House's ire.

In his visit to Mali, security adviser Atallah said he saw no problem with Moscow's presence in the region, insisting that the country was "free to choose its partners".

"Since the French were kicked out ... and Russia welcomed into the region, Trump sees no problem in accompanying and/or supporting Russian efforts in the region. The fact that the Russians eschew democratic values and human rights promotion also aligns with the Trump administration's transactional approach to relations between states," Bisa Williams, a former US ambassador to Niger, told AFP.

Williams, now a consultant and academic, said Trump could strike an agreement that "would guarantee majority or near-majority ownership and a high percentage of extracted minerals in exchange for support fighting terrorism".

That could involve the deployment of American mercenaries, along the lines of how Russia used Wagner, Williams said.

"That way, he wouldn't have to defend the policy before Congress or his MAGA base."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

In Africa, Russia is swapping a ruthless paramilitary for a replica it can control. What’s Putin’s game plan?

Nimi Princewill, 

CNN
Mon 25 August 2025 


Russian officers from the Wagner Group are seen around Central African President Faustin-Archange Touadera in Bangui, on July 17, 2023. - Leger Kokpakpa/Reuters

Wagner, a feared Russian mercenary group that is notorious for staging a failed mutiny against Moscow and accused of committing serious abuses against civilians in Africa, is being replaced on the continent by another Russian paramilitary.

Its successor, experts say, is the Kremlin-controlled Africa Corps.

For years, Wagner, which was funded by the Russian government and praised for its “courage and heroism” by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023, has embodied Moscow’s military offerings in the Sahel, a semiarid region of western and north-central Africa that extends from Senegal to Sudan.

With Wagner’s exit from swathes of the region, which is beset by recurring coups, armed rebellion and extremist insurgency, however, it seems the Kremlin wants a controlled, but unofficial, army to replace it.

Putin revealed at a Russia–Africa Summit in 2023 that the Kremlin had “concluded military-technical cooperation agreements with more than 40 African countries, to which we supply a wide range of weapons and equipment.”

The Kremlin is to some extent filling a vacuum left by Western troops, who were expelled by several governments in the Sahel between 2022 and this year as anti-Western sentiments reverberate around the region.

Protesters hold a banner reading "Thank you Wagner" during a demonstration organized to celebrate France's announcement it would withdraw French troops from Mali, in February 2022. - Florent Vergnes/AFP/Getty ImagesMore

At a time when the West has largely turned its attention elsewhere, from wars in the Middle East and Ukraine to tensions with China, Russia has become a sought-after security partner both within and outside the Sahel.

In parts of the region, such as Mali, where Wagner sustained some of its worst known losses, with dozens reported killed in a rebel ambush a year ago, its forces have joined local militaries in combat against insurgents.
What we know about the Africa Corps

Wagner’s successor is not self-run. Unlike the mercenary group, the paramilitary Africa Corps is placed under the umbrella of the Russian defense ministry, according to the group’s official Telegram channel.

The corps consists of elite combat commanders from Russia’s army. “Priority” recruitment was also given to current and former Wagner fighters, a post on the Africa Corps’ Telegram channel revealed in January 2024.

Operatives of the Africa Corps have since joined the battlefield, conducting joint operations with Mali’s military against militia groups.

Wagner announced in June that it was leaving Mali, one of the troubled nations in the Sahel, saying it had completed a three-and-a-half-year mission fighting insurgents in the junta-led West African country.

A similar exit by Wagner has been mooted in the Central African Republic (CAR), the nerve center of the group in Africa.

Wagner has operated in CAR since 2018 and has become the dominant force in the Central African nation following the final exit of French troops in 2022. It is widely credited in CAR with helping the nation stave off collapse.

Earlier this month, however, military officials in CAR told The Associated Press that Russia’s defense ministry had asked authorities in the nation to substitute in the Africa Corps for Wagner and to pay for its services in cash.

Remuneration of Wagner for providing military services to CAR, which include protecting its president, reclaiming territory seized by rebels and keeping armed groups at bay, “is done in an extremely hidden and discreet manner” by CAR’s government, Martin Ziguélé, an opposition lawmaker who served as prime minister from 2001 to 2003, told CNN in January.

As a result, it is not clear how Wagner’s services are paid for. Still, previous CNN investigations found that companies linked to ex-Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had won concessions to mine gold and diamonds in CAR, where nearly 70% of the population lives in extreme poverty – the fifth highest poverty rate in the world, according to a World Bank assessment in 2023.

Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash northwest of Moscow in August 2023, two months after he launched a failed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.

A photograph from 2024 shows a bronze statue depicting Wagner group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin (L) and commander Dmitry Utkin in front of the "Maison Russe" (Russian House) in Bangui, CAR. - Annela Niamolo/AFP/Getty ImagesMore

Neither a government spokesperson nor CAR’s defense or communication ministers responded to CNN’s request for comment on the alleged planned pivot to the Africa Corps. CNN has also not heard back from Russian authorities.

The communications minister, Maxime Balalou, told CNN in January that a bilateral defense agreement “allowed Russia to provide us with weapons,” as well as “handling and training for our defense and security forces, (and) assisting our armed forces on the ground.”

The Africa Corps has already arrived in other parts of Africa, according to the Africa Corps’ Telegram channel, operating in West African nations Niger and Burkina Faso, both governed by juntas.

Supporters of junta leader Capt. Ibrahim Traore wave a Russian flag in the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on Oct. 2, 2022. - Sophie Garcia/AP

It is not known whether the corps functions in Central Africa’s Equatorial Guinea, which hosts an estimated 200 Russian military instructors, according to a Reuters report late last year. Equatorial Guinea has had the same ruler for 46 years.
What does Putin want to do differently?

Russia’s move to replace Wagner in Africa could be a “strategic rebranding by Moscow,” according to Héni Nsaibia, a senior analyst at the crisis-monitoring group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

“With the Wagner name severely tarnished after the mutiny and Prigozhin’s death, Russia is likely consolidating its foreign military ventures under formal state control by erasing the ‘Wagner’ brand while retaining its core functions under a new name like the Africa Corps,” Nsaibia said in written responses to CNN.

“In this way,” he added, “Moscow can distance itself from the mercenary narrative while maintaining a strong presence in the region.”

Institutionalizing its military engagement in Africa could benefit the Kremlin in other ways, Nsaibia said.

“The Africa Corps is intended to give Moscow greater control over operations, and potentially more international legitimacy, and fewer legal and reputational risks,” Nsaibia explained.

Wagner has faced lawsuits from human rights groups over accusations of human rights abuses.

The European Union sanctioned the Wagner Group and individuals and entities connected to it in 2021 and 2023. Among those sanctioned in 2023 were “the head of the Wagner Group in Mali, where Wagner mercenaries have been involved in acts of violence and multiple human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, as well as various high-profile members of the group in the CAR,” the Council of the EU said.

United Nations experts also called in 2023 for an independent investigation into alleged crimes committed by the Wagner Group and the Malian military.

Their statement said, “the lack of transparency and ambiguity over the legal status of the Wagner Group… create an overall climate of terror and complete impunity for victims of the Wagner Group’s abuses.”

Malian authorities pushed back against the allegations, saying that the country “was unwavering in prosecuting and punishing proven perpetrators of human rights violations.”

While many questions remain about Wagner’s operations in Africa, there are mixed views about the impact its counterterrorism operations with local armies have had on the continent.

“I don’t see what Wagner has brought to the battle (against terrorists),” said security consultant Mamadou Adje.

“Since they (Wagner forces) joined the fight, jihadists have spread across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger with lots of civilian casualties,” Adje, a retired Senegalese colonel who previously served in Mali and Burkina Faso under West African regional bloc ECOWAS, told CNN.

As for Wagner’s replacement with the Africa Corps in certain countries, “I don’t see much changing on the battlefield,” Adje said.

In Nsaibia’s view, Wagner helped Mali’s military “achieve some tactical and strategic victories, notably the recapture of rebel strongholds.”

Nonetheless, he said, the group leaves behind “a state on the brink of collapse.”

People walk through the weekly market in M'Berra camp in Bassikounou on June 7, 2022. The camp, in Mauritania, is one of the largest in West Africa, hosting refugees fleeing violence in Mali. - Guy Peterson/AFP/Getty ImagesMore

Earlier this month, UN delegates told the Security Council that security across the Sahel “is deteriorating rapidly,” and that terrorist activity in parts of the region has intensified “in scale, complexity and sophistication, including through the use of drones, alternative internet communication, and increasing collusion with transnational organized crime.”

Ahunna Eziakonwa, a UN Assistant Secretary-General and Africa Director for the UN’s development program (UNDP), warns that the security problems in the Sahel “are beyond the capacity of the national governments,” and so global support is needed.

What matters, though, is that any help from external actors is “well-meaning,” she told CNN, adding: “We’re not promoting any kind of support in the military side or security side that undermines human rights, irrespective of where it comes from.”

CNN’s Anna Chernova contributed to this report.