EVEN the most cursory of glances at recent events in the Sahel should lead most reasonable-minded observers to see the complete disdain that Africans are held in by the collective West.

The discussion about the recent Sahel revolutions — because that’s what they are — take place within the prism of someplace or something else.

It raises the question of whose stories matter? Whose history matters? What does this mean for the now and for the future?

These new expressions of pan-Africanism in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso took place either because of the influence of Russia or the failure of the French colonial rulers to live up to the bargain they made with the former heads of the Sahel nations to beat back Islamist terrorists.

Rarely is the discussion about the material conditions within those countries and the desire to put an end to around six centuries of humiliation and exploitation.

And rarely does the discourse bother to reach the thoroughly ordinary desire of Africans — as it would be anywhere else in the world — to reclaim the dignity that has been systematically stripped from them during that period of humiliation.

Before touching on the material conditions facing Africans within the Sahel — sadly far from unusual across the continent — I want to make the point that the region was at the heart of one of the great African civilisations.

Even this declaration will be controversial with those that still believe Africans have always and still do live in mud huts and eat the first available white person that they have the fortune (or misfortune) to come across.

There were many great African civilisations, of which the great Mali empire was but one. This huge empire dominated most of the region of west Africa between the 13th and 17th centuries. At its height the Mali empire ruled over an area larger than the entirety of western Europe.

It is the empire over which the man who is reputed to be the richest person in history, Mansa Musa, ruled.

This was an incredibly wealthy empire. The story of Musa’s 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca is often used to illustrate its immense wealth.

A contemporary Egyptian historian, al-Maqurizi, recorded that as Musa passed through Egypt’s capital, Cairo, members of his entourage spent lavishly. So lavish was their spending, “the rate of the gold dinar fell by six dirhams.” 

I make this point not to celebrate Musa or his or any empire. There can be little doubt that where the rulers of an empire can lavishly spend others would have struggled to survive and perhaps would even have been organising against the empire. 

My point is that vast wealth was available in this region and, aside from that, the Malian empire was a hub of learning, culture and trade, attracting scholars (including to the famous library of Timbuktu), merchants and artisans from across the Islamic world.

European contact with Mali began in the 15th century when Portuguese explorers first arrived on the west African coast. The Portuguese particularly wanted to establish trade relations with Mali because of the vast wealth they had heard about.

This led to increased European presence in west Africa and facilitated the expansion of the trans-Saharan trade routes. This led to increased competition for control over trade routes and access to commodities valued by the Europeans such as gold, salt and ivory. 

Overall, European contact with Mali had a significant impact on the trans-Saharan trade and influenced the dynamics of trade relations between west Africa and Europe.

Mali came under French colonial rule in the late 19th century as part of France’s quest for imperial power, in which it sought to exploit the rich resources of the country and establish an economic and military foothold in the region. This marked Mali’s own period of humiliation under the control of the French.

France imposed its authority through military power and established a system of colonial administration that aimed to exploit Mali’s resources for its own economic gain at the expense of the local community.

As it ruthlessly plundered the vast natural resources of Mali, the French imposed their own colonial boundaries, disrupted traditional social structures and encouraged conflicts among different ethnic groups within Mali. 

Figures from the World Bank show that 91.6 per cent of Malians are forced to live on less than $10 per day (just under £8). The figure for Niger is even higher on 97.6 per cent. In Burkina Faso 88.5 per cent are forced to survive under the threshold.

The vast wealth from the area must have gone somewhere? It’s no great mystery. The plundered wealth of the region moved northwards.

This region, like so many in Africa, has been reduced to a mere extractive zone on behalf of the rich nations of the global North.

The benefits of the vast uranium (in Niger), gold (in both Mali and Burkina Faso) plus the oil and gas reserves of the region were extracted to boost the profits of northern transnational capital, including arms companies, while the workers whose labour makes this possible struggle to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

The Sahel region, known as one of the poorest regions in the world, is, in reality, one of the richest and highly coveted by the self-appointed “masters of the universe,” otherwise known as monopoly capital.

A recent article in the French left-wing newspaper L’Humanite was clear about how the region whetted “the appetites of major international groups.”

Much of this appetite to lay hands on the wealth of the region was sated over the years by corrupt “misleaders” who were more than happy to sell the labour of their populations for a substantial cut of the available riches.

These people had to be removed from power to enable any progress to be made towards the people who create the wealth to be able to benefit directly.

Maintaining centuries of dominance requires an insistence that Africans are inferior and the enforcement of racist practices of control over the population.

This dehumanising of people of African descent on the continent and across the diaspora is the cornerstone of the racism that fuels capitalism to this day.

But the people of the Sahel have developed an understanding that the presence of foreign military forces and the corporate capital it protects on their territories are motivated by nothing other than a devouring appetite for the vast mineral and energy resources available.

They also understand the way that racism and the sowing of intra-cultural divisions have been used to maintain power and boost profits. 

It follows that the revolutions that have taken place in recent years in the region are no accident and are an inevitable fightback against the years of humiliation and ruthless exploitation.