尼亚美（尼日尔首都）的狮子们即将飞黄腾达。这些难以捉摸的猫科动物们或许不知道这一点，但当它们搬到尼亚美动物园宽敞的"新家"时，将成为当代非洲争夺战的最新受益者。
与中国政府以及代表它的企业在尼日尔的其它慷慨之举相比，狮子们造价6万美元的围场，只能算是最起码的恩惠。尼日尔是一个贫瘠的西非国家，其1500万民众更习惯于饥饿与贫困。
中国与非洲许多国家签署了协议，以基础设施和现金换取它们的资源，以维持自身经济的高速增长。在与尼日尔签署了类似协议之后，中国不仅获取了又一个非洲石油来源，而且还将获得铀的开采权——这或许是唯一一种比原油更为敏感的大宗商品。此外，对于那些担忧非洲大陆资源争夺战可能重新导致冷战时期灾难性的边缘政策的人而言，中国此举将尼日尔推到了领头羊的位置。
在距离动物园几个街区处，两条殖民地时期铺设的大道在这里交汇。一条是戴高乐将军大道(Avenue du Général de Gaulle)，以确保法国在其非洲殖民地独立很长时间之后，仍能保持对其控制权的法国领袖戴高乐命名。另一条则是铀大街(Avenue de l'Uranium)，正是这种金属使得尼日尔成为法国核驱动经济的基石。
过去十年的大部分时间里，中国都在与西方集团争夺非洲的石油与矿产品。但它同时还有着雄心勃勃的核实力目标，中国对储量稀少的铀资源的追逐，让人们更为关注上述竞争。
过去三年，随着中国开始重新进军非洲，尼日尔与法国的关系急转直下。该国政府将铀开采权授予中国国核海外铀资源开发公司(Sino-U)及其它勘探公司，打破了法国国有控股核集团阿海珐(Areva)长达40年实际意义上的垄断。
中国的竞争，带来了尼日尔首座炼油厂及造价7亿美元水力发电大坝的动工，更别说北京慷慨提供的数亿美元"签约奖金"。受此影响，尼日尔向法国方面开出了更为苛刻的条件，作为批准阿海珐开采大型新矿的交换。新矿将使尼日尔成为全球第二大铀生产国，仅次于哈萨克斯坦。
然而，今年2月份的一场政变，加剧了那些认为这种疏远中存在危险隐患的人们的焦虑情绪。尽管在这场政变中，种族对抗和机会主义都起到了各自的作用，但马马杜•坦贾(Mamadou Tandja)成为第一位可能由于接受中国示好而直接导致其下台的非洲领导人。"正是因为坦贾有了中国的钱，所以他觉得可以无视欧盟、西非经济共同体(Ecowas)和美国，" 尼日尔前任部长穆罕迈德•巴祖姆(Mohamed Bazoum)表示。他目前就职于"顾问委员会"，这是一个由夺取政权的军政府创立的机构。
尼日尔局势的动荡不安，令西方情报机构感到焦虑，他们考虑的是基地组织(al-Qaeda)在边界形同虚设的撒哈拉地区的存在。毒品、军火和假货在这里自由流动。用于制造"脏弹"的铀原料有可能遭遇同样的命运，这是西方国家最大的安全梦魇之一。欧洲正为自身对俄罗斯天然气资源的依赖感到不安，并寻求借助核能来抗击气候变化，值此之际，尼日尔的铀资源可能也具有重要的战略意义。
从2004年坦贾成为尼日尔历史上第一位当选连任总统开始，他就着手松开尼亚美与巴黎之间的脐带联系。从2007年起，尼日尔新发放约150张铀勘探许可证，而尼日尔高达半数的出口收入来自于铀金属。坦贾政府曾指责阿海珐公司为撒哈拉地区的图阿雷格(Tuareg)叛军提供资助。这些叛军劫持尼日尔侨民，并在北部矿区铺设地雷，以此胁迫政府，要求在铀开采利润中分得更大的份额。尼日尔与法国的关系因此降至冰点。尽管法国方面对上述指控予以否认，尼日尔还是将阿海珐公司两名资深高管驱逐出境。
与此同时，尼日尔本土透明运动组织Rotab负责人阿里•伊德里莎(Ali Idrissa)表示，中国为获得阿泽利克铀矿开采权所支付的300亿非洲金融共同体法郎（简称：非郎）中，有250亿非郎（合4700万美元）被用于购买军火以镇压叛乱。中国石油天然气集团公司(China National Petroleum Corporation)为阿加德姆油田开采权支付的好处费更多——约为3亿美元，相当于尼日尔年出口额的近三分之一。该集团计划投入50亿美元，开采出尼日尔的第一桶石油。
有了新财政支持以抵消被冻结的援助，坦贾开始放纵自己的独裁倾向。在2008年10月中国炼油厂的开工典礼上，一群坦贾的支持者上演处女秀，此后频频现身。他们身穿写有tazartché字样的T恤衫，这在当地豪萨语中意为"连续"——表明他们要求在一年之后的大选时，延长坦贾的任期，超出宪法规定的上限。
接下来的几个月里，坦贾发起了挑战尼日尔现行制度的运动。当国民议会和宪法法院先后拒绝支持他谋求连任的计划时，他解散了这两家机构。坦贾不顾国内抗议和非洲及西方国家的制裁，在去年8月的全民投票中获胜，此次投票遭到了反对派的抵制。
译者/何黎
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001032739
The lions of Niamey are going up in the world. The cramped cats may not know it, but when they move to their spacious new enclosure at the zoo in the capital of landlocked Niger, they will be the latest beneficiaries of a latter-day scramble for Africa.
Their $60,000 (£42,000, €49,000) pen is the merest nicety compared with the rest of the largesse that Beijing and companies acting on its behalf are lavishing on an arid west African nation of 15m people more accustomed to hunger and penury.
Following the same bargain it has struck across the continent – swapping infrastructure and cash for resources to sustain its breakneck growth – China has secured access not only to another source of African oil but also to what is perhaps the single commodity considered more sensitive than crude: uranium. It has also turned Niger into a bellwether for those who fear that the struggle to secure the continent's resources risks re-creating the ruinous brinkmanship of the cold war.
A few mud-red blocks from the zoo, two colonial thoroughfares converge. One, Avenue du Général de Gaulle, is named for the French leader who ensured his country's stamp remained on its African colonies long after independence. The other, Avenue de l'Uranium, bears the name of the metal that has made Niger the bedrock of France's nuclear-powered economy.
China has vied with western groups in Africa for oil and minerals for the best part of a decade. But it also has ambitious nuclear power targets and its quest for uranium – repositories of which are few and far between – has thrown the rivalry into sharper focus.
In the past three years, as China embarked on its new thrust into Africa, relations between Niamey and Paris plunged. The award of uranium concessions to China's Sino-U and other prospectors broke the de facto 40-year monopoly of Areva, France's state-controlled nuclear group.
The competition has seen work start on Niger's first refinery and a $700m hydroelectric barrage, not to mention hundreds of millions of dollars in "signature bonuses", courtesy of Beijing. It helped the country wring tougher terms from France before granting permission for Areva's vast new mine, which will make the country the world's second-biggest uranium producer after Kazakhstan.
Yet a February coup d'etat heightened the anxiety of those who see danger in a stand-off. Although ethnic rivalries and opportunism played their part in the putsch, Mamadou Tandja became the first African leader whose downfall could be traced directly to his embrace of Chinese suitors. "It was because Tandja had Chinese money that he felt he could mock the European Union, Ecowas [the regional bloc], the US," says Mohamed Bazoum, a former minister who now serves on the "consultative council" created by the military junta that seized power.
The volatility in Niger is worrying to western intelligence agencies as they contemplate al-Qaeda's presence in the effectively borderless lands of the Sahara. Drugs, weapons and counterfeit goods flow freely. That uranium destined for a dirty bomb could do the same ranks among the west's security nightmares. Niger's uranium could also prove of strategic importance as Europe frets about its dependence on Russian gas and looks to nuclear energy to help combat climate change.
From 2004, when he became the first president in Niger's history to be re-elected, Mr Tandja set about loosening Niamey's umbilical bond to Paris. From 2007, Niger granted some 150 new permits to prospect for uranium, which accounts for up to half its export earnings. Relations with France reached their nadir when his government accused Areva of funding the Tuareg rebels of the Sahara who kidnapped expatriates and laid landmines in the northern mining region, demanding a greater share of the uranium spoils. Two senior Areva officials were ejected from the country in spite of French denials.
Meanwhile, CFA Fr25bn ($47m, £33m, €38m) of a CFA Fr30bn bonus that China paid for rights to mine at Azelik went on arms to combat the rebellion, says Ali Idrissa, head of Rotab, a local transparency campaign. China National Petroleum Corporation paid a far larger bonus – some $300m, equivalent to about one-third of Niger's annual exports – for the Agadem oil block. It plans to spend $5bn to produce Niger's first oil.
With fresh financial support that would offset frozen aid, Mr Tandja began to indulge his authoritarian streak. At the October 2008 ceremony to mark the start of construction at the Chinese refinery, a band of supporters made the first of several appearances. Their printed T-shirts bore the word tazartché, or continuity in the local Hausa language – a demand that Mr Tandja should extend his rule beyond its constitutional limit a year later.
Over the next few months, Mr Tandja waged a campaign against Niger's institutions. When the national assembly and then the courts refused to back his plans to remain in office, he dissolved them. Defying protests at home and sanctions from Africa and the west, he triumphed in a referendum last August that the opposition boycotted.
Memories are still fresh of the way repressive kleptocrats such as Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko and Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam played Washington and Moscow against one another to keep themselves in guns, funds and power before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today's emissaries from east and west come bearing energy contracts rather than ideology.
Rights groups denounce Beijing for its readiness to do business with authoritarians in Sudan or Angola provided the oil keeps flowing. Yet they note that relationships such as Washington's cosy ties to Equatorial Guinea's petro-dictatorship deprive the west of any moral high ground.
Even Mr Tandja's critics would not liken him to a Mobutu or a Mengistu. But that is partly because he failed to cling to power. "He became arrogant," says one western diplomat. "He counted too much on the Chinese to be there."
Perhaps Mr Tandja had not acquainted himself with China's policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of African states. When young officers stormed the presidential palace on February 18, Beijing was as silent as it had been while he amassed power. The toppled president remains under lock and key. The junta pledged elections by February and has barred its own members from contesting them – so those overseeing the transition are not themselves participants. The soldiers have signalled they have no plans to break with China, although they intend to audit all Tandja-era mining permits.
If Mr Tandja set too much store by his Chinese allies, perhaps Beijing also invested too much in him – and his family. One son, Ousmane, was Niger's commercial attaché in China. According to people familiar with the matter, he has close links to Trendfield Holdings, a British Virgin Islands-registered consultancy that helped China secure its uranium permits and is funding the lion enclosure at Niamey zoo. (El-Moctar Ichah, head of Trendfield's Niger subsidiary, dismisses such claims as "speculation".)
France's critics say its subdued criticism of both Mr Tandja's authoritarianism and the coup undermined democratic forces in Niger. "There is a sense of neo-colonialism – that France has no friends, only interests," says one French expatriate.
Those interests may remain secure. "Fundamentally, Areva is still the big partner," says another western diplomat. Olivier Muller, Areva's managing director in Niger, dismisses talk of damaging rivalry with China. "It's like in oil: there are enough blocks to produce," he says. "You might compete for the blocks you want but after [they are assigned] you co- operate. In the next 10 years . . . all the so-called 'competitors' will share infrastructure."
Areva's €1.2bn ($1.5bn, £870m) Imouraren mine is on track to start production in 2013. It is slated to yield 5,000 tonnes of uranium a year, doubling Areva's output in the country. Mr Muller says the negotiations with Mr Tandja were tough but that Areva's agreement to increase payments to the government by 50 per cent had more to do with rising global prices than competition. He describes Salou Djibo, the previously unknown officer and former United Nations peacekeeper now heading the junta, as "a nice guy", adding: "I met the president for an hour this morning . . . If you have one hour with the president, it has gone well. If not, you get five minutes. Obviously, we don't talk politics, just business."
Xia Huang, China's ambassador in Niamey, says Beijing's bonds to Niger are unshaken and that grander projects are in the offing, including pipelines and coal-fired power stations. China, he says, has offered Africa a "more profitable option" than other partners have. With a little overstatement, he adds: "This country has already seen uranium extraction for nearly 40 years. But when one sees that the direct revenues from uranium are more or less equivalent to those derived from the export of onions each year, there's a problem."
Beijing's critics are unbowed. Mr Idrissa, the transparency campaigner, repeats charges heard across the continent. Chinese companies prefer to import their own labour and, when they do employ locals, they do so in poor conditions and at low wages, he says. "They are going to take our riches and go," Mr Idrissa concludes.
But for others, China's efforts offer an opportunity for industrialisation on a scale never countenanced by the colonisers of old. Ibrahim Iddi Ango, an industrialist and president of the chamber of commerce, is pushing for regulations that would oblige foreign investors to foster the local private sector. He notes that France's Total and others including ExxonMobil of the US sat on the Agadem block for years but balked at Niamey's demands. "Each time the government said, 'build a refinery', they said: 'it's impossible'. The Chinese came and said: 'A refinery? What size?'"
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