In this episode, I’m joined by Netfa Freeman, Coordinating Committee member of the Black Alliance for Peace and Co-Coordinator of BAP’s Africa team, to discuss the history of imperialism and anticolonial resistance in West Africa, with a specific focus on the developments in the Sahel region over the last few years. Examining the ongoing legacies of French colonialism and neocolonialism in this region, and the current upsurge of mass anticolonial sentiment that has manifested most recently in the rise of military leaders like Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Traoré, we situate these developments within a longer history of West African resistance to imperialist violence and exploitation.
Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Washington, D.C. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website, as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock.
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Sources and helpful links:
Tanupriya Singh — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger form Alliance of Sahel States to advance collective defense (People’s Dispatch, September 2023)
Ndongo Samba Sylla — The CFA Franc: French Monetary Imperialism in Africa (Africa at LSE blog, July 2017)
Achy Ekissi — “People make the revolution:” charting an anti-imperialist path in West Africa (Interview in People’s Dispatch, October 2023)
Burkina Faso Launches $12 Million Tomato Factory (CGTN Africa, December 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace — ECOWAS Fact Sheet
Kwame Nkrumah — Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and The Socialist Movement of Ghana’s Research Group — Defending Our Sovereignty: US Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity (June 2023)
Samar Al-Bulushi — What Is AFRICOM? How the U.S. Military is Militarizing and Destabilizing Africa (Teen Vogue, July 2023)
AnneClaire Stapleton and Mitch McCluskey — Mali severs diplomatic relations with Ukraine for providing intelligence to rebels for Wagner ambush (CNN, August 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace — US Out of Africa campaign
Black Alliance for Peace — Join the US Out of Africa Network
The anti-imperialist upsurge in the Sahel is irreversible, say leaders at historic conference in Niamey (People’s Dispatch, November 2024)
Antonio Cascais — How Sahel states ditched Western mining interests (Deutsche Welle, February 2025)
Abhijit Mohanty — Uranium in Niger: When a Blessing Becomes a Curse (Geopolitical Monitor, April 2018)
Niger revokes French nuclear group’s licence at major uranium mine (Al Jazeera, June 2024)
Jasper Saah — Why is the U.S. government targeting African Stream? (Liberation News, October 2024)
Black Alliance for Peace US Out of Africa Network — Report: The Anti-Imperialist Upsurge in the Sahel and the Historic Conference in Niamey (Black Agenda Report, November 2024)
Martina Schwikoswky and Philipp Sandner — Are Niger's uranium supplies to France under scrutiny? (Deutsche Welle, September 2023)
Sean Jacobs — Sankara: daring to invent Africa's future (The Guardian, October 2008)
Social links:
Return to Bandung:
Twitter: twitter.com/returntobandung
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/returntobandung/
Pranay Somayajula:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/p_somayajula
Website: https://www.pranaysomayajula.com/
Substack: https://www.culture-shock.xyz/
Netfa Freeman:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/netfafree
Radio show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wpfw-voices-with-vision/id1155206169
Black Alliance for Peace: