Paper short abstract:

Abdoulaye Mamani’s historical novel Sarraounia centres on the bloody encounter between colonial France and the Azna people of what is now Niger. Using a postcolonial ecocritical framework, I argue that the novel shows how nuclear energy futures are built on a foundation of war crimes.

Paper long abstract:

In 1898, the Central African-Chad Mission set out to consolidate French colonial holdings across the Sudan. The military venture was notoriously bloody, ultimately descending into depravity and the murder of leading officers by their own troops. In the preface to his 1980 novel Sarraounia, Abdoulaye Mamani writes, “On 2 January 1899, Voulet and his legion of Black mercenaries leave Ségou…They cross the lands of the Mossi, the Gourma, and the Djerma, pitilessly smashing all resistance…. [T]hey raze entire villages, decimating men, women and children with a rare savagery…. It is then that they arrive on Hausa lands…where they encounter a small kingdom governed by a magician-queen: Sarraounia.” Drawing on written archives and oral history, the novel depicts this encounter, detailing Queen Sarraounia’s heroic resistance and leadership.

France’s ultimate conquest of what is now Niger has paid off handsomely. In 1957, three years before Nigerien independence, France discovered large deposits of uranium which would prove to be the world's fourth largest. The country accounts for roughly 7% of global uranium supply and is a leading supplier to France, which relies on nuclear power for 80% of its energy needs. This paper examines Mamani’s novel and its account of the brutal, scorched-earth tactics of French colonialists as they laid claim to the African landscape and its mineral supplies. Using a framework of postcolonial ecocriticism, I argue that the novel shows how nuclear energy security rests on a foundation of war crimes—a past that must be reckoned with in building new energy futures.