By fdecomite (Silk Road
1992), via Wikimedia Commons
23.02.2017
Strategic Background
The word “Africa” conjures
vivid images in the minds of many, with most unaware non-Africans reactively
recalling stereotypical images of war, famine, and poverty that they were
introduced to on a wide scale during the 1990s “African World War” in the Congo,
but the present-day reality is markedly different than what most people might
imagine. Instead of being a ‘third world’ ‘basket case’ of all the world’s
worst problems like the mainstream media persistently tried to present it as
for decades, today’s Africa is relatively stable and boasts a high rate of
growth which has attracted billions of dollars of Asian investment.
In the context of the New
Cold War between the unipolar and multipolar worlds, Africa takes on a premier
importance as an unavoidable proxy battleground between these two camps,
economically led by the US and China, respectively. Each side wants to harness
the continent’s production and consumption capabilities in order to tap into
this promising marketplace, eager to take advantage of its cheap labor and
growing need for diverse imports. This is less important for the US as it is
for the EU, since Washington always has Latin America which it can rely on for
this, but Brussels’ Eastern European and Balkan backwaters are no longer as
sufficient as they once were in serving as dumping grounds for the Western EU’s
excess products and as loosely regulated regions for cyclically producing even
more of them. France is at the vanguard of the EU’s African policy, though the
US behaves as the “Lead From Behind” ally in providing discrete military
assistance whenever necessary, thus heightening its unipolar worth to the EU as
a whole.
China, on the other hand,
isn’t as exploitative as the Europeans are, contrary to its controversial
history of relations with Africa (which was admittedly filled with more than
enough cultural and economic shortcomings) and what the Western mainstream
media still writes about it in this regard. Beijing, unlike Brussels, genuinely
needs mutually beneficial development to occur in Africa in order that the
continent can function as a large-scale economic partner for sustaining China’s
own growth by profitably channeling its overcapacity and serving as a
destination for much-needed outbound investment. While it’s true that China
also desires reliable access to Africa’s many natural resources, it’s also now
just as equally important for the People’s Republic that the continent’s
extractive material industry contributes to the development of a viable
commercial economy, and to this end, China has reinvested much of its capital
in forging a network of multipolar transnational connective infrastructure
projects that can assist with this goal. It’s not just Africa either, but the
whole world that’s playing host to China’s many One Belt One Road projects
commonly referred to as the New Silk Roads.
Qualifying
Caveat/Introductory Disclaimer
The
author concisely elaborated on the transcontinental projects that China is
advancing through East and Central Africa in a previous piece for Oriental Review,
but now it’s time to explore the northern analogues that collectively
constitute the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road from Senegal to Sudan. It’s important
for the reader to keep in mind that most of these projects aren’t even built
yet, and it’s very possible that this vision will never be actualized in full
due to internal corruption, ‘budgetary management’, and the Western-provoked
use of Hybrid War to disrupt these
projects, the last of which is comparatively easier to pull off in Africa than
most other places in the world in seeking to spark divisive identity-driven
conflicts. Having said that, this article is intentioned to provide the reader
with the bigger picture behind China’s New Silk Road strategy in Africa,
particularly as it relates to the transcontinental Sahelian-Saharan. The
projected routes of these various infrastructure projects will also provide a
clue about where the next Hybrid Wars might break out and could explain why
certain ones such as Boko Haram and the civil war in South Sudan have already
transpired.
Since most readers will
probably be overwhelmed with the details presented in this article, the last
part of it ends with a map that illustrates each of the Silk Road projects that
are discussed below and concludes with a few strategic observations about the
bigger picture being presented.
Bringing
Giants Together
In
the grand scheme of things and from the perspective of China’s New Silk Road
vision, natural economic logic suggests that the continent would be best served
if its two most populous countries were connected to one another, which would
help each of them benefit from the other’s growth as well as encourage more
intra-African trade in general. In practice, this means that a transport
corridor would have to be constructed between Nigeria and Ethiopia (and its Red
Sea maritime outlet of Djibouti), with the quickest route being through the
resource-rich states of South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and
Cameroon. Unfortunately, the first two of the three transit countries were purposely destroyed by the US’ meddling
intrigue and therefore logistically unreliable and horrendously unsafe.
The
CCS Detour
An
alternative route had to be blazed which made the best out of the given
circumstances and still endeavored to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Red
Sea, which is why China went ahead with funding the oft-delayed Cameroon-Chad-Sudan (CCS) Silk Road from Douala to Port
Sudan (via N’Djamena). Still, this project doesn’t directly link up with
Nigeria, which was supposed to be the main purpose behind the entire vision,
though it does get very close to doing so in both the Chadian capital and the
Cameroonian port, leaving space for northern and southern branch lines (whether
rail or highway) to extend into the country whenever the situation is deemed
safe enough. Security is an issue in Northeast Nigeria because of Boko Haram,
which coincidentally became a major problem right around the time that both
South Sudan and the Central African Republic descended into chaos, while
Southeastern Nigeria is recently experiencing a surge of violence from criminal gangs
and self-proclaimed separatists, thus explaining why the CCS Silk Road isn’t
the NCS Silk Road and doesn’t formally include Nigeria.
The
Nigerian Silk Roads
The purpose of the three
Nigerian Silk Roads is therefore to connect the country to the CCS Silk Road
via the branch lines that were spoken about above, taking care to run through
the most important and economically promising areas of the country in order to
best utilize this game-changing series of infrastructure investments.
Lagos-Calabar:
The
first project of significance is the $11 billion Lagos-Calabar Silk Road that was agreed to in
July and which plans to run along the entirety of the Nigerian coastline,
though dangerously through the oil-rich southeastern region currently beset by low-intensity criminal-separatist
violence. Although ending right before the Cameroonian border, a short interconnector
could foreseeably be built one day in linking Calabar with Douala and thus
joining the Lagos-Calabar Silk Road with the CCS one. Functionally speaking,
this would accomplish the goal of connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Red
Sea, and while the CCS Silk Road (which itself isn’t yet built) doesn’t
penetrate into Ethiopia, a branch line could be constructed one of these days
in finally fulfilling the master plan of bringing the Nigerian and Ethiopian
giants together.
Lagos-Kano:
The
second Nigerian Silk Road route is the one between Lagos and Kano by means of Abuja,
which will connect the two largest cities
in the country via the capital when it’s finally completed. This is a strategically
crucial route because it doesn’t run through any ongoing Hybrid War-afflicted
areas, as in it’s not affected by Boko Haram nor any of the Southern
separatists. That isn’t to say that its long-term security is inherently
guaranteed and couldn’t be offset by a future conflict between the central
authorities and the Yoruba-nationalist Oodua People’s Congress, but that it’s generally
the safest of the three Nigerian Silk Roads and the least likely to be
destabilized in the short term.
Port Harcourt-Maiduguri:
The last branch of the Nigerian
Silk Road runs from the southeastern
oil capital of Port Harcourt to the capital of Boko Haram’s Borno State,
Maiduguri, in the northeast of the country. This corridor is the eastern
counterpart of the Lagos-Kano line, but unlike its western analogue, it passes through
the doubly destabilized regions of the criminal-separatist Southeast and the
Salafist Northeast, making it the most strategically risky of the three routes
but also the one which would most directly connect Nigeria with N’Djamena and
thenceforth with the rest of the CCS Silk Road up until its Red Sea terminus.
It’s for this reason, alongside corruption and other related challenges, that
the route’s modernization has been beset by numerous delays and will probably be
the last of the three to enter into operation.
Kano-Maiduguri-N’Djamena
Interconnector:
Just like how the
Lagos-Calabar Silk Road need a short interconnector to link it up with the CCS
Silk Road terminal of Douala, so too does its perpendicular portions of
Lagos-Kano and Port Harcourt-Maiduguri need their own for joining together and
reaching N’Djamena. While this isn’t officially in the cards at the moment, it
makes complete sense for it to eventually be built, but only after all three
lines are up and running first. Additionally, Boko Haram needs to be defeated
beforehand and Northeastern Nigeria needs to be pacified in order to ensure
this project’s lasting security.
The
Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road And The West African Rail Loop
Nigeria
is one of the most crucial countries for China’s New Silk Road, strategy in
Africa not just because of its own promise as the most populous country on the
continent and its second-largest economy, but because of the
geographically facilitating role that it plays in extending OBOR all across
Africa. Nigeria is approximately midway between Senegal and Sudan, and given
the existing infrastructure investments that China is partaking in all
throughout West Africa’s main state, it makes sense for any additional projects
west of Nigeria to pass through it en route to Sudan (or eventually Ethiopia
one day).
The
first project of repute is what the author has dubbed the Sahelian-Saharan Silk
Road, which is pretty much just Trans-African Highways 5 and 6, the former being from
Dakar to N’Djamena and the latter being from the Chadian capital to Djibouti.
Trans-African Highway 6 mostly overlaps with the Chadian-Sudanese parts of the
CCS Silk Road, with the main exception being that the Chinese-invested rail
project breaks with the continental-wide highway one in veering off to Port
Sudan instead of Ethiopia, at least for the time being. As for the
Trans-African Highway 5, its projected modification is that it has the very
real chance of accommodating rail transport just like its eastern is eventually
envisioned to, since the Dakar-Bamako portion between the Senegalese
and Malian capitals is presently being built with Chinese
assistance. If this railroad were extended to the Burkinabe capital of
Ouagadougou, then it would successfully link up with the West African Rail Loop, which connects to the Nigerien
capital of Niamey, Nigeria’s Lagos (and thus to the Lagos-Caladan Silk Road),
the largest Beninese city and only seaport of Cotonou, and the Togolese,
Ghanaian, and Ivorian capitals of Lomé, Accra, and Abidjan.
Concerning the remaining
portion of Trans-African Highway 5 between Niamey and N’Djamena, that too has
the chance to be developed into a railroad and all that it takes is yet another
short line being built, though this time between the Nigerien capital and the
second-largest Nigerian city of Kano. After that, the Kano-Maiduguri-N’Djamena
Interconnector written about above would suffice for completing the last part
of Trans-African Highway 5. There is, however, a possibility that a workaround
could be constructed between Kano and N’Djamena, especially if Northern Nigeria
falls deeper into violence and the original direct route to the Chadian capital
becomes unviable. In that case, it might be necessary to construct a detour
from Niamey and Kano to the second-largest Nigerien city of Zinder, and
thenceforth continue along Niger’s densely populated southern border belt all
the way to Lake Chad, choosing either to go around it by cutting through the
northeastern tip of Nigeria (which might not be feasible amidst the prolonged
circumstances of destabilization that gave rise to the rerouting in the first
place) or via the longer way around the Chadian section.
Grand
Strategy
In summary, Nigeria forms
the irreplaceably crucial juncture of China’s Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road in
linking the Atlantic country of Senegal with the Red Sea-bordering state of
Sudan. In principle, Nigeria still functions as a very important node on
China’s New Silk Road even without its various interconnections to the rest of
West Africa or further across the eastern reaches of the continent, in that
each of the three Nigerian Silk Roads are economically sound and strategic
investments on their own. When all three are taken together as an integrated
infrastructural package, the unified project acquires a significance much
larger than the sum of its total parts, and this is exponentially multiplied
with each of the other Silk Road projects that it ultimately connects to (CCS
Silk Road, West African Rail Loop, and Trans-African Highway/Railway 5).
Red: CCS
(Cameroon-Chad-Sudan) Silk Road
Gold: Trans-African Highway
5
Lavender: Ethiopia-Nigeria
Silk Road (the most direct projected route through resource-rich territory)
Pink: West African Rail Loop
Blue: Lagos-Calabar Silk
Road
Green: Lagos-Kano Silk Road
Yellow: Port
Harcourt-Maiduguri Silk Road
Strategic
Observations
Several salient conclusions
can be reached from the above map:
* The Sahelian-Saharan Silk
Road is pretty much just a slightly modified and rail modernized version of
Trans-African Highways 5 and 6 that aims to connect Dakar with Djibouti;
*
France’s Operation Barkhane and the US’ ‘anti-terror’ presence along the Sahel almost
perfectly overlap with the projected Silk Road route, proving that both Great
Powers intend to influence it;
* The Chadian capital of
N’Djamena will acquire heightened significance as a crucial juncture and transit
point along the Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road due to its geographically central
location;
* Boko Haram’s terrorist
insurgency in the Lake Chad basin threatens to sabotage China’s
transcontinental plans through the formation of a black hole of chaos right in
the middle of the route;
* Burkina Faso and the
Sudanese region of Darfur lie in the middle of the Western and Eastern parts of
this transcontinental corridor and could thus become prime Hybrid War targets
for splitting each half;
* and the West African Rail
Loop and Nigerian Silk Roads essentially serve as southern branches of the
Sahelian-Saharan Silk Road, and the latter is a means for linking the Gulf of
Guinea and Red Sea markets.
All
personal views are my own and do not necessarily coincide with
the positions of my employer (Sputnik News) or partners unless
explicitly and unambiguously stated otherwise by them. I write in a
private capacity unrepresentative of anything and anyone except for my
own personal views. Nothing written by me should ever be conflated
with Sputnik or the Russian government's official position on any
issue.
the positions of my employer (Sputnik News) or partners unless
explicitly and unambiguously stated otherwise by them. I write in a
private capacity unrepresentative of anything and anyone except for my
own personal views. Nothing written by me should ever be conflated
with Sputnik or the Russian government's official position on any
issue.
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