‘Hamani Diori was personally convinced by my analysis’, explains Samir Amin. ‘But he still had to convince the Ivory Coast and Senegal, which rejected the proposal flat-out. As France did.’ Indeed, the French president Georges Pompidou was not particularly receptive to Diori’s ideas when the latter presented them to him in June 1969. In the weeks following the meeting, relations between the two countries became even more tense, creating a climate of mutual distrust. When France delayed paying Niger what it owed the country for the exploitation of its uranium reserves, the Nigerien authorities suspected that it was a punishment for having requested a revision of the cooperation agreements.

Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa's Last Colonial Curr…, loc. 172