Central African Republic

The Central African Republic exists because France needed a colony to strip—and because extractors keep finding new ways to loot it. This landlocked territory has the bizarre distinction of being poorer today than at independence in 1960: GDP per capita has declined over six decades while the country sits on uranium, crude oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, and timber. The same resources that could have built a nation instead attracted a succession of parasites, from French concessionary companies to Emperor Bokassa to Wagner Group mercenaries.

France established a post at Bangui on the Ubangi River in 1889 and formalized colonial control in 1894 as Ubangi-Shari. The extraction model was brutal even by colonial standards: concessions were granted to private companies that forced locals to harvest rubber and coffee without pay, holding their families hostage until quotas were met. The Kongo-Wara rebellion (1928-31) failed to break French control. When Barthélemy Boganda became the first Central African elected to the French National Assembly in 1946, he dreamed of uniting all of French Equatorial Africa into a single nation. His mysterious death in a 1959 plane crash—months before independence—left the country to less capable hands.

What followed was tragicomedy. David Dacko established a one-party state with French backing until Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa overthrew him in 1965. Bokassa suspended the constitution, declared himself president for life in 1972, then proclaimed himself Emperor in 1976. His $200 million coronation ceremony was largely bankrolled by France under Giscard d'Estaing. France's tolerance ended when Bokassa personally participated in the massacre of 100 schoolchildren in 1979; French paratroopers removed him. The pattern—coup, extraction, international intervention, repeat—has defined CAR ever since.

Since 2013, civil war between 14 armed groups has displaced millions. A 2019 peace deal only partially reduced violence, with signatories later withdrawing to continue fighting. Into this chaos came Wagner Group in 2018, exchanging paramilitary services for mining concessions. Wagner's front companies—Midas Ressources, Lobaye Invest, Diamville SAU—have reportedly extracted over $2 billion from illicit gold and diamond operations. Over 900 civilians have been killed since 2020 in operations linked to Russian mercenaries, including a 2023 massacre of at least 100 miners in Koki.

President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, seeking a third term in December 2025 elections, is one of Russia's closest allies in Africa. His government has traded sovereignty for security—or at least the appearance of it. The country is technically more stable than during the 2020 electoral cycle, thanks to UN peacekeeping, Wagner forces, and Rwandan troops, but this is stability imposed by external powers extracting resources while they protect a government that cannot govern alone.

The numbers are damning: GDP just $2.75 billion in 2024, per capita income $529, 73.9% living below the poverty line. Seven out of ten people survive on less than $2.15 per day. CAR ranks 191 out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index—ahead of only South Sudan and Niger. This is a country where the colonial extraction model never ended; it just changed managers.

By 2026, tensions over Moscow's demand to replace Wagner with the Africa Corps military unit may reshape the Russian presence, but the underlying dynamic will persist: a state too weak to control its territory or resources, dependent on foreign security providers who pay themselves from the mineral wealth that should belong to Central Africans. Like a host organism colonized by successive parasites, CAR demonstrates what happens when extraction never builds the capacity for self-sustaining development.