Last Saturday, military-backed forces of Niger’s presidential guard detained and overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum, marking the African nation’s fifth military coup since it gained independence from France in 1960. The head of the presidential guard General Abdourahmane quickly declared himself the new leader of Niger’s government:
While such affairs are of course interesting in their own right, recent developments in Niger are reverberating far beyond the ever shifting sands of coup-torn African politics and threaten to involve France, Russia, and even the United States in an increasingly volatile African powder keg.