Gabon Coup Is Fresh Blow for West --- Takeovers mount as African governments U.S., Europe support don't bring prosperity.

"The images are now familiar. Fatigue-clad officers appear on state television declaring that they have ousted the country's president. Crowds pour into the streets in support of the coup plotters. Western governments denounce the military takeover and urge, without success, that the president be freed.

On Wednesday, it was the turn of Gabon, once one of France's closest allies in Africa and the sixth former French colony and Western military ally on the continent to experience a coup d'etat in the past three years. The Gabonese officers' announcement that President Ali Bongo had been detained at his residence came five weeks after the ouster of Niger's Western-supported leader, Mohamed Bazoum, some 1,200 miles to the north.

The head of Gabon's presidential guard, Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, will succeed him. Like Bazoum in Niger, Bongo appears to have been ousted by the man tasked with protecting him.

The paths to power of Bongo, whose family has ruled Gabon since 1967, and Bazoum, whose 2021 election was celebrated in Western capitals as Niger's first democratic succession, couldn't be more different. Gabon, with its wealth of oil, manganese, dense forests and pristine wildlife, is one of Africa's richest nations per capita. Niger, located in the harsh semidesert of the Sahel and in the midst of fighting a deadly Islamist insurgency, is one of its poorest.

But the dynamics driving the military takeovers and the apparent public outpouring of support for unelected leaders are similar. Postcolonial governments, long supported by Europe and the U.S. and often acting as democracies in name only, have failed to deliver prosperity and opportunities for young, growing and increasingly urbanized and connected populations.

The median age in Gabon is 21 years, half that of its former colonial ruler France. It is even less than that in Niger, Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, the other former French colonies where the army recently has hoisted unelected leaders into office.

The West's inability to pressure coup plotters to relent is a reflection of a broader changing of the guard in Africa, where emerging economies such as China, and Turkey often carry more weight than Europe and the U.S.

Russia's international posturing also has provided leaders on the continent with an alternative narrative to the Western canon of democracy and human rights.

In few places has the supremacy of the West, and particularly France, declined as precipitously as in Gabon, whose former president, Omar Bongo -- Ali Bongo's father -- for decades enjoyed a cozy relationship with Paris's ruling class. His government grew rich from taking a cut of oil revenue produced by French oil major Elf, a predecessor of today's TotalEnergies, and other Western energy giants like Shell.

By the time the coup plotters went on national television to announce Ali Bongo's ouster, China had become Gabon's biggest trading partner, importing much of its oil and manganese, a mineral vital for the production of steel used in construction and vehicle manufacturing.

The French military presence has shrunk to some 350 soldiers, who mostly train local Gabonese troops. In contrast to countries in the Sahel, where the U.S. and Europe have been fighting local offshoots of al Qaeda and Islamic State, Gabon has been a less-important military ally in recent years.

The government of President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday stressed its support for "free and transparent electoral processes." John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said the situation is "deeply concerning," but that all embassy personnel and the small number of American troops in the country were safe." [1]

1. World News: Gabon Coup Is Fresh Blow for West --- Takeovers mount as African governments U.S., Europe support don't bring prosperity. Steinhauser, Gabriele; Bariyo, Nicholas. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Aug 2023: A.16.