RUSSIA has dangled the possibility of building a nuclear power plant in uranium-rich Niger – a vast, arid state on the edge of the Sahara desert that has to import most of its electricity.
It may be deemed impractical and may never happen, but the concept is yet another move by Moscow to seek a geopolitical advantage over Western nations.
Niger has historically exported the metal for further refining in France, but that is changing as the military-led country cuts off ties with the former colonial power.
The uranium-mining operation operated by French nuclear group Orano was nationalised in June, which cleared the way for Russia to put itself forward as a new partner.
It is talking about power generation and medical applications, with a focus on training local expertise under a co-operation agreement signed between Russian-state corporation Rosatom and the Nigerien authorities.
If ever brought to fruition this would be the first nuclear power project in West Africa.
Beyond initial discussions, it is unclear how far down this road things will progress. But already, with this first move, Moscow has shown that it grasps the depth of local frustrations.
For more than five decades Orano, which until 2018 was known as Areva – mined Niger’s uranium, to supply the nuclear power sector that is at the heart of France’s energy strategy.
The French government-owned company now gets most of its supplies from Canada and Kazakhstan and has projects in development in Mongolia and Uzbekistan.
But the Nigerien connection remained significant and freighted with a degree of political and perhaps even cultural weight.
Yet Paris did not share its nuclear energy knowhow with its loyal African supplier. Niger, meanwhile, has to rely largely on coal-fired generation and imports of electricity from Nigeria.
But now, the rupture in relations between Niger’s junta and France has allowed Moscow to offer the hope, however distant, of a nuclear future, something that Areva/Orano, over so many years of local operation, had failed to do.
“Our task is not simply to participate in uranium mining. We must create an entire system for the development of peaceful atomic energy in Niger,” Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev declared on 28 July during a visit to Niamey.
Naturally, this is not entirely altruistic. There are economic benefits for Russia and it is part of a broader push to displace Western influence from the Sahel region.
The Russians could get the chance to develop the mine in Imouraren, one of the world’s largest uranium deposits.
A French plan to develop the site was initially stymied by the slump in world uranium demand after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. It was revived in mid-2023, only for the military junta that seized power weeks later to then cancel Orano’s rights to the Imouraren deposit.
Getting hold of this key asset would cement Russia’s already important position in the global production of uranium, a commodity now so vital to world hopes that nuclear power will help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.