Imperialism can pay ... the imperialized

  The French empire in Africa never really ended.  In 1960, the autonomous territories of the “French Community” got seats in the United Nations, but for most the change was less than dramatic.  Only Mali dropped the use of the old colonial currency.  The new African governments increased trade restrictions, bit by bit, and the French market closed to their exports, bit by bit, but Paris fought hard to keep the European market open for a very long time.  The Yaoundé and Lomé conventions granted the “associated” states preferential access to what later became the E.U. 

Empire didn’t go away in another more visible manner:   French troops remained on the continent, French nationals staffed the governments and newly-created armies, French companies (often state-owned) dominated the export industries, and France knocked over more than a few recalcitrant governments while propping up others. 

Niger, where the French found uranium, made for a particularly egregious example.  In 1963, French troops rescued the government of President Hamani Diori from a coup.  In 1969, the French discovered uranium, and two French companies got exclusive rights.  In March 1974, French, Nigerien, and Gabonese representatives meant in Niger’s capital to discuss Diori’s insistance that the country’s uranium contracts be renegotiated.  Coincidentally, Diori fell to a coup the next month.  It seems that all of Diori’s French military advisors had gone on vacation and no one picked up the phone in Paris when news of the violence arrived.  The New York Times went so far as to accuse France of abetting the coup because Diori wanted to give uranium concessions to Exxon.  The next guy kicked French troops out of the country, but the French remained in control of the mines ... and their troops came back in 1981 anyway.

So what did the combination of continuing French intervention and French uranium mining mean for Niger?  An unexpected answer below the fold. 

Unsurprisingly, given the French presence, every attempt by Niger to give concessions to other countries or companies has so far amounted to nothing.  Imagine that.  Areva, the French state-owned nuclear company, remains the only game in town.  And it gets a little worse for the Nigeriens, because there really is no spot market for uranium.  There is something calling itself a spot market price, but that is really a just an average of all published short-term delivery contracts.  The reality is that 85% of all uranium is traded under long-term private contracts, usually lasting years at a time.  (Areva, the state-owned French company that controls the Nigerien mines, just signed one with the China-Guangdong Nuclear Power Company that will run until 2022.) 

In other words, you have a situation in which there is pretty much only one buyer for Nigerien uranium.  Niamey has to sit down and negotiate a price with that single buyer, except that single buyer owns mines in Canada and Kazakhstan, is developing mines in the CAR and Namibia, recently began exploring in Gabon, and can always, if it wanted to, sign short-term contracts with outside producers.  In fact, Niger really plays no role in producing or selling uranium.  The price is important only because it determines how much the country makes from its one-third stake in the French mining operation.  The negotiations can be amusing, full of diplomat expulsions and accusations that Areva is aiding the same Tuareg rebels whom kidnap its employees. 

It would be reasonable to conclude that Niger would get screwed simply from the way the French have structured the entire situation.  I certainly thought that poor little Niger was getting screwed.  There it is, on the outskirts of Françafrique, feeling the brunt of modern-day imperialism.  Areva executives told me that wasn’t the case, Niger did very well out of the arrangement when prices were low, but they would, wouldn’t they? 

Only when I looked up the negotiated export prices and compared them to the published  “spot market” averages, the executives turned out to be right.  Except for a few years during the 2004-08 uranium price bubble, France overpaid Niger for its uranium.  And by no small margin.

I mean, rarely has the evidence of political interference been so clear as it is in French West Africa ... and yet, in this one rather important case, it seems to have been good for the West Africans.  Or at least one of their governments.  Anyone have a suggestion as to how that happened?

Comments

[pc]

Noel, you're huge in Mexico:

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/editoriales/vi_44101.html

Fourth to last paragraph...

[Bernard Guerrero]

French subsidy to what they see as a "strategic" industry, given that it underpins (at some remove) the independent nuclear force?