They are following where China led
, chronicler of hazy entrepots, would have loved Djibouti. A third of global shipping steams by this little bit of north-east Africa. All the world, it seems, is crammed together in its capital. French, Italian and Japanese military bases jostle each other near the shore. Camp Lemonnier, formerly run by the French Foreign Legion and now America’s only permanent military base in Africa, sits by the airport; China’s first such base is a little to the north-west of it.
This suggests that the continent will increasingly be a place where international rivalries play out. In a speech in December John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, spoke of it as the site for a new era of “great power competition”. But such competition does not have to be a zero-sum game. Infrastructure investments tend to benefit all comers, not just the investors. Most of all, they can benefit Africans.
Military ties are strengthening alongside the diplomatic ones. The Horn of Africa has become part of the broader competition between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on one side and Iran, Qatar and Turkey on the other. In 2017 Turkey built its largest overseas military base, and its first in Africa, in Somalia. Saudi Arabia and thehave launched attacks into Yemen from their positions in the Horn. Saudi Arabia has also recruited soldiers from Sudan, some of them children.
Russia’s moves are more muscular, and more mercenary. Often the key figures are cronies of Mr Putin, like Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former chef, rather than official state employees. Mr Vines likens them to Cecil Rhodes and other 19th-century imperialists who would lead private invasions with the implicit protection of the government back home.
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