Mercenaries in Africa after 1960

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Mercenaries have played a vital role in the modern history of Africa from the independent movements of the 1960s up until the 2020s. Broadly the mercenary actions can be broken into two types of related actors, which can then be examined regionally. Mercenaries have been used to both influence conflicts in order to support or attack governments friendly to various foreign governments, notably the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and many other foreign actors.^[1][2][3][4] This is mainly done to maintain spheres of influence, and create friendly governments.^[2] This was most prevalent during the Cold War era, but continues to this day, notably with the Russian Wagner Group.^[4] The second group of actions are mercenaries working on behalf of large multinational corporations, helping to secure resource extraction areas. Oftentimes the support of mercenary groups to keep a leader or government in power comes at a large cost, that the government is unable to pay, who then offers the mercenary company or Private Military Company (PMC) rights to resource extraction areas such as diamond mines, oil fields or other valuable natural resource to pay for the services of the mercenary company. This has notably happened in Sierra Leone.^[5] Legislation has been adopted by the OAU (Organization for African Unity) as well as the IRCC (International Red Cross Committee), and various African governments (notably South Africa) to attempt to regulate or ban the use and creation of mercenary companies.^[6] This legislation has been mostly unsuccessful largely because world powers such as the United States and Russia continue to condone the use of mercenaries as a tool of state craft.^[5] Many modern scholars consider the use of mercenaries in Africa to be a form of neocolonialism.^[5]