Between August 2022 and July 2025, the Western military footprint in West Africa was dismantled piece by piece. The last French detachment left Mali on 15 August 2022, Burkina Faso in 2023 and Niger on 22 December 2023. Then came the Kossei base in Chad on 30 January 2025, the 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion in Port-Bouët on 20 February 2025, and Camp Geille in Senegal on 17 July 2025, after sixty-five years of permanent presence. US forces completed their withdrawal from Niger on 15 September 2024, having left Air Base 201 in Agadez on 5 August.
Four actors, four strategies
Russia chose presence on the ground. The Wagner Group announced its withdrawal from Mali in June 2025; its activities were taken over by Africa Corps, under the Russian Ministry of Defence, after deployments of about one hundred personnel to Burkina Faso in January 2024 and Niger in April 2024.
Turkey chose equipment, with one flagship product: the Bayraktar TB2 drone, delivered to Togo, Burkina Faso and Niger in 2022, then to Mali in 2023 and 2024.
China has built the broadest relationship. The Circle’s Atlas records eighteen documented Chinese cooperations with fifteen of the eighteen countries tracked: Norinco armoured vehicles in Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal, Wing Loong II drones in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, helicopters in Ghana, patrol vessels donated to Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, defence agreements with Cameroon and Sierra Leone, and a first defence attaché appointed to Niger on 8 February 2025.
The European Union bet on training with its Security and Defence Initiative in the Gulf of Guinea, launched on 11 December 2023 for Benin, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo, with an initial two-year duration.
The strategic lesson
This is not merely a change of suppliers. It changes the nature of the tie: equipment partnerships create technical dependency — parts, ammunition, maintenance, operator training — that commits a decade, far beyond the government that signs. For Côte d’Ivoire, which keeps a French training relationship after the Port-Bouët handover and hosted Exercise Flintlock in April 2026, the issue is controlled diversification: multiplying partners without multiplying dependencies.
What to watch
- The fate of the EU initiative in the Gulf of Guinea, whose initial mandate ran to end-2025.
- The extension of Chinese deliveries to coastal states and their financing terms.
- Armies’ ability to maintain fleets of mixed origin.
Sources
- France 24 — France hands over the Port-Bouët base (20 February 2025)
- France 24 — France shuts last military bases in Senegal (17 July 2025)
- AFRICOM — US withdrawal from Niger completed
- Al Jazeera — Wagner leaving Mali, Africa Corps to remain (June 2025)
- Africa Defense Forum — Turkey increases its share of the drone market
- Council of the European Union — EU Security and Defence Initiative in the Gulf of Guinea