West Africa: Anchor Economies and the Coup Belt Challenge

Nigeria and Ghana: The Anchors That Must Hold

West Africa's strategic logic starts with two countries: Nigeria and Ghana. Get those relationships right, and you have a foundation for everything else. Get them wrong or neglect them, and the entire region becomes harder to work with.

Nigeria is indispensable. Two hundred million people. Africa's largest economy. A fintech sector, companies like Flutterwave and Moniepoint, that have attracted billions in global venture capital, and are reshaping how money moves across the continent. A creative industry that exports culture globally. And offshore oil wealth that has long anchored American energy interests. The U.S.-Nigeria relationship has historically been narrower than it should be, focused on security and oil rather than the broader economic partnership Nigeria's scale warrants.

Action: The U.S. should propose a bilateral U.S.-Nigeria Tech Prosperity Deal focused specifically on digital trade, secure telecom infrastructure, and AI applications for financial inclusion. Nigeria's digital economy is one of the most dynamic on Earth. American tech companies that build strategic frameworks there now will be the ones that dominate when Nigerian fintech goes truly global.

Ghana is the model the U.S. should be publicly showcasing. Stable democracy, pro-business governance, multiple MCC compacts, and a government that has embraced AfCFTA by hosting its Secretariat in Accra. Action: Designate Ghana as the anchor hub for U.S. regional trade initiatives in West Africa, with DFC prioritizing a pipeline of manufacturing and digital projects that can be announced at the next U.S.-Africa Business Forum.

Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire: The Rising Tier

Below the two anchors, Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire represent the rising tier of West African partners whose strategic importance is growing faster than U.S. engagement can keep up with.

Senegal's significance has jumped with the discovery of significant offshore gas reserves. Its leadership in African diplomacy, its recent term as AU Chair, and its history of hosting U.S. special forces training hubs make it a reliable partner on both the security and economic fronts. The critical question is whether the U.S. will be part of Senegal's gas development story or watch French and Chinese companies dominate it. Action: DFC and EXIM should jointly develop a Senegal energy financing package that offers transparent, locally beneficial terms for LNG infrastructure development, positioning the U.S. as the partner of choice before the major contracts are awarded.

Côte d'Ivoire is West Africa's fastest-growing major economy and an MCC compact country with active American investment in agribusiness and finance. The DFC has already supported a major bridge and interchange project in Abidjan, a tangible, visible demonstration of high-quality American infrastructure investment. That story needs to be amplified and scaled.

The Coup Belt: What Happened and Why

Since 2020, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, and Niger have all experienced military coups that either strained or severed U.S. relationships. Understanding why this happened is not just historical analysis; it is the precondition for not repeating it.

These coups did not happen because African populations love Russia. They happened because years of counterterrorism partnerships failed to deliver stability, because governance failures created economic frustration, and because military actors found in Russia a sponsor willing to guarantee their hold on power without demanding accountability. Wagner moved into vacuums the U.S. helped create, not through malice, but through a security-first approach that neglected the development and governance dimensions that make security sustainable.

Mali is now firmly adversarial. Its junta expelled Western forces, ended the UN MINUSMA peacekeeping mission, and welcomed Wagner. Burkina Faso followed. Niger, until July 2023, the linchpin of U.S. Sahelian strategy, hosting critical drone bases, was lost to a coup overnight. Action: The U.S. must conduct a formal after-action review of what the counterterrorism-first strategy in the Sahel delivered versus what it promised, and use those findings to redesign future security partnerships across the continent to require governance and development components as non-negotiable conditions, not optional add-ons.

Holding the Line with ECOWAS

The coup belt is not permanently lost. These are recent shifts driven by specific political crises, and they are potentially reversible. West Africa's frustrated populations did not sign up for Russian influence; they signed up for stability and prosperity that their governments, with varying degrees of Western support, failed to deliver.

The most important near-term action in West Africa is strengthening the coastal anchor states, Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Senegal, so that jihadist spillover from the Sahel does not create a second wave of instability. These countries are next in the threat progression, and their ability to hold is not guaranteed.

Action: Work through ECOWAS to establish a Coastal States Security and Development Compact, with the U.S. providing security capacity-building alongside substantial economic investment, making the contrast with the Wagner model as visible as possible. When transitions eventually occur in the coup belt, the U.S. should have ready-to-deploy packages: MCC threshold programs, AGOA reinstatement, Dand FC project pipelines. The window between a junta's fall and a new government's consolidation is short. Being the first to show up with credible development support is how you shape outcomes.