Geopolitics, Natural Resources, and External Power Competition in West Africa: An Original Structural Analysis

This dissertation provides an original structural analysis of the geopolitics of natural resource competition and external power rivalry in West Africa, developing a new theoretical framework that integrates resource geopolitics, post-colonial international order theory, and African agency to explain the complex patterns of external power engagement with West African states in the contemporary period. The return of great power competition to Africa, manifested in the expanding presence of China, Russia, France, and the United States in the sub-region, has fundamentally altered the geopolitical environment within which West African states including Nigeria conduct their foreign policies, yet existing theoretical frameworks drawn from Cold War strategic studies inadequately capture the distinctive resource-governance-security nexus driving contemporary external engagement. The dissertation employs a mixed-methods comparative design, combining quantitative analysis of foreign direct investment flows, military assistance agreements, and natural resource concession data from 15 West African states from 2010 to 2023 with qualitative comparative case analysis of external power engagement strategies in Nigeria, Mali, Guinea, and Ghana, and 55 elite interviews with West African diplomats, resource governance experts, and international relations scholars. The Resource Geopolitics Framework, the Structural Realism Theory, and the African Strategic Studies Approach provide the theoretical anchors. The dissertation proposes the African Resource Geopolitics Theory, which specifies how natural resource endowments generate distinctive patterns of external power competition, local elite bargaining, and governance distortion in post-colonial West African states. Keywords: resource geopolitics, West Africa, external power competition, Africa, natural resources.