How Washington's strategic planners see Africa's most populous country—and why Nigerians should be paying attention
There is a disturbing document sitting in plain sight.
It is not a leaked Pentagon memo.
It is not a classified CIA cable.
It is not a secret invasion plan.
It is something arguably more revealing: a publicly available study by the RAND Corporation examining how competition between the United States, China and Russia could develop into conflict on African soil.
And one country receives particular attention.
Nigeria.
The report, Great-Power Competition and Conflict in Africa, was published by RAND in 2023 and prepared for the U.S. Air Force. The Library of Congress describes it as a study examining where competition between the United States, China and Russia in Africa could turn into conflict, what forms such conflict could take, and the implications for the U.S. government and the U.S. military. Importantly, RAND says the underlying research was completed in September 2021, before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Nigeria and Mozambique were selected as detailed case studies.
That does not mean Washington has decided to start a war in Nigeria.
But it tells us something extremely important about how American strategic planners think about the continent.
They are no longer looking at Africa merely through the old language of development assistance, humanitarianism and counterterrorism.
They are looking at Africa as a theatre in the struggle among great powers.
And Nigeria sits close to the centre of that calculation.
Why Nigeria?
The answer is not mysterious.
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, one of its largest economies, a major oil and gas producer, a military power in West Africa and a country with enormous diplomatic influence.
But geography may be even more important.
Nigeria sits on the Gulf of Guinea.
It has access to the Atlantic.
It borders the increasingly unstable Sahel.
It possesses enormous natural resources.
It has a huge consumer market.
And, perhaps most importantly, Nigeria is not firmly inside anybody's geopolitical camp.
That makes it valuable.
It also makes it contested.
Nigeria has traditionally maintained close security relations with Washington.
The United States provides Nigerian security forces with training, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, maritime-security assistance and other forms of counterterrorism cooperation. At the same time, China has become an important source of Nigerian military equipment and infrastructure investment. Carnegie noted in 2023 that China was Nigeria's top arms supplier and a major infrastructure partner.
Russia also maintains military and economic relationships with Nigeria.
According to U.S. Congressional Research Service material, Russia has supplied Nigeria with significant quantities of military equipment, while the two countries signed a military cooperation agreement in 2021.
Nigeria, in other words, is doing something Washington increasingly dislikes seeing countries do:
it is maintaining relationships with everyone.
The Nigerian Problem for Washington
Nigeria's foreign policy has historically been pragmatic.
Abuja does business with Washington.
It buys weapons from China.
It maintains military relations with Russia.
It participates in Western-led security initiatives.
It engages with BRICS countries.
It cooperates with countries across the Global South.
From Nigeria's perspective, this is strategic flexibility.
From Washington's perspective, however, a multipolar Nigeria creates uncertainty.
That is one of the central realities hidden beneath the language of “great-power competition.”
The United States does not simply want countries to be stable.
It wants them to remain strategically accessible.
China wants access to markets, infrastructure projects, resources and political influence.
Russia wants strategic partnerships, military relationships, diplomatic influence and economic opportunities.
The Nigerian state wants something else:
room to manoeuvre.
That difference matters.
The RAND Report Does Not Predict a U.S. Invasion
This needs to be made absolutely clear.
The RAND report does not say:
America has decided to invade Nigeria.
It does not announce a war plan.
It does something more sophisticated.
It constructs scenarios in which competition among Washington, Beijing and Moscow could escalate into conflict.
That is what strategic planning institutions do.
Military planners routinely develop scenarios that governments hope will never happen.
But there is nevertheless something revealing about the exercise.
Because once a country is identified as a potential conflict flashpoint, its geography, infrastructure, political divisions, resources and relationships begin to be evaluated through the lens of military competition.
And that is exactly what RAND does.
Nigeria Becomes a Chessboard
The danger for Africa is that great powers rarely describe their strategic competition in terms of what African citizens want.
They describe it in terms of access.
Influence.
Resources.
Ports.
Military cooperation.
Intelligence.
Supply chains.
Strategic positioning.
The language is different, but the underlying logic is familiar.
During the Cold War, Africa became a battlefield for American and Soviet competition.
Angola became one of the most devastating examples.
The Congo became another.
Somalia became another.
Mozambique became another.
Local conflicts acquired international sponsors.
African political struggles became entangled with global ideological competition.
Millions of Africans ultimately paid the price.
The great powers moved pieces.
Africans lived on the board.
That history should make the RAND report impossible to dismiss as merely an academic exercise.
China Is Changing the Equation
China's rise has transformed the strategic calculation.
Beijing is no longer simply a distant trading partner.
China has become one of Africa's most important economic partners.
In Nigeria, Chinese companies have participated in major infrastructure projects.
The Beijing-funded Lekki Deep Sea Port became operational in Lagos in 2023.
A Chinese naval task group also visited Lagos that year, an unusual event that prompted speculation among observers about China's longer-term maritime ambitions in the Gulf of Guinea. Carnegie described the visit as officially focused on naval relations while noting the speculation surrounding China's possible interest in a future military presence.
From Beijing's perspective, these relationships are economic and strategic.
From Washington's perspective, they potentially represent expanding Chinese influence in an area historically dominated by Western powers.
That is precisely what great-power competition means.
Russia Is Playing a Different Game
Russia's position is different.
Moscow cannot compete with China's economic footprint in Africa.
It does not have China's infrastructure financing capacity.
But Russia has something else:
military power.
Russia has cultivated relationships with African governments through arms sales, security agreements and military partnerships.
The Wagner Group—and subsequently Russia's Africa Corps—expanded Moscow's influence in parts of the continent, particularly across the Sahel and Central Africa. The U.S. Congressional Research Service describes Russian engagement as including military agreements, arms sales and deployments of Russian-linked private military personnel.
Russia's strategy therefore intersects with the Nigerian question from another direction.
Nigeria sits next to a region where several governments have moved away from traditional Western security partnerships and toward Russia.
Mali.
Burkina Faso.
Niger.
The geopolitical map around Nigeria is changing.
And Washington is watching.
The Sahel Is the Strategic Pressure Point
Nigeria's northern geography makes the situation even more complicated.
The country sits immediately south of the Sahel.
And the Sahel has undergone one of the most dramatic geopolitical transformations in Africa in recent years.
France has lost influence.
American military access has been reduced.
Russia has expanded its relationships.
Military governments have taken power in several countries.
Islamist militant organisations remain active.
This is not simply a terrorism problem.
It is also a geopolitical problem.
Who provides intelligence?
Who supplies weapons?
Who trains soldiers?
Who controls military bases?
Who provides surveillance technology?
Who gets access to ports?
Who controls critical infrastructure?
Who becomes the security partner of last resort?
Those questions increasingly have global consequences.
And Nigeria Is Too Important to Ignore
Nigeria's importance explains why Washington continues to cultivate close security ties with Abuja.
The United States cannot simply watch the Sahel deteriorate while Nigeria—its most important state in West Africa—moves entirely outside its strategic orbit.
That does not mean Washington wants a war.
Quite the opposite.
From the perspective of American strategic planners, preventing Nigeria from becoming an adversarial power may be far more valuable than fighting Nigeria.
This is the part that is frequently missing from online discussions about American foreign policy.
Modern great-power competition does not necessarily begin with missiles.
It begins with relationships.
Military training.
Intelligence-sharing.
Infrastructure.
Diplomatic pressure.
Economic incentives.
Arms sales.
Technology.
Political influence.
Access agreements.
And sometimes sanctions.
The objective is often to shape the environment so that military confrontation becomes unnecessary.
The Predatory Question
This is where Africa has every right to be sceptical.
Every great power presents its foreign policy as mutually beneficial.
America talks about democracy, security and counterterrorism.
China talks about development, infrastructure and South-South cooperation.
Russia talks about sovereignty, partnership and non-interference.
But states ultimately pursue interests.
Washington wants to protect its global strategic position.
Beijing wants access to markets, resources and strategic routes.
Moscow wants influence and geopolitical relevance.
None of these powers is operating in Africa purely out of charity.
And Africa should stop pretending otherwise.
The question should therefore not be:
“Is America good and China bad?”
Nor:
“Is China good and America bad?”
The correct question is:
“What does Africa gain, what does Africa lose, and who controls the terms?”
The Resources Beneath the Geopolitics
Nigeria's natural resources are impossible to ignore.
Oil.
Gas.
Critical minerals.
Agricultural potential.
A huge consumer market.
A strategic coastline.
A young population.
And a geographic position connecting Atlantic trade with the West African interior.
In a world increasingly concerned about energy security and critical supply chains, Nigeria's strategic importance is likely to increase rather than decline.
That means Africa's natural resources will increasingly become objects of great-power competition.
The danger is not necessarily that America, China or Russia will literally invade Nigeria to seize its oil.
The more realistic danger is subtler.
African governments can become dependent on foreign financing.
Dependent on foreign military equipment.
Dependent on foreign technology.
Dependent on foreign intelligence.
Dependent on foreign infrastructure.
Once dependency becomes sufficiently deep, sovereignty becomes theoretical.
A country can remain legally independent while having very little freedom to make strategic decisions.
Nigeria Must Avoid Becoming Someone Else's Frontline
This is ultimately the lesson of the RAND report.
The problem is not that RAND imagined a conflict involving Nigeria.
Strategic planners are supposed to imagine bad outcomes before they happen.
The problem would be if Nigerian policymakers treated those scenarios as someone else's problem.
They are not.
Nigeria's geography makes it strategically valuable.
Its population makes it politically influential.
Its resources make it economically attractive.
Its location makes it militarily important.
That combination guarantees foreign interest.
The only question is whether Nigeria can turn that interest into leverage rather than dependency.
Africa Has Seen This Movie Before
The continent has experienced foreign powers turning African conflicts into proxy wars.
During the Cold War, Washington and Moscow frequently supported opposing sides in African conflicts.
The consequences were catastrophic.
The lesson should be obvious.
Africa cannot afford another era in which foreign powers compete for strategic dominance while Africans provide the battlefield.
The continent needs its own strategic doctrine.
African governments should be asking:
What happens if America and China enter a military confrontation?
What happens if Russia's confrontation with the West expands geographically?
What happens if the Gulf of Guinea becomes strategically contested?
What happens if foreign powers demand military access?
What happens if African states are pressured to choose sides?
And, most importantly:
What happens to African sovereignty when neutrality becomes unacceptable to competing superpowers?
The Real Threat Is Not a Secret American War Plan
The most sensational interpretation of the RAND report is that Washington is secretly preparing to fight China and Russia in Nigeria.
The evidence does not establish that.
The more important story is actually more disturbing because it is already happening.
Africa is becoming strategically important again.
China is expanding its economic and military relationships.
Russia is expanding its security partnerships.
The United States is intensifying its competition with both.
Nigeria is one of the continent's most strategically important states.
And American strategic planners have explicitly examined how competition involving Nigeria could potentially escalate into conflict.
That is not a declaration of war.
But it is a warning about how the world's most powerful states increasingly see Africa.
They see strategic geography.
They see markets.
They see resources.
They see military access.
They see influence.
Africa must learn to see itself the same way.
Not as a prize.
Not as a battlefield.
Not as an arena in which foreign powers settle their disputes.
But as a collection of sovereign societies with interests of their own.
Nigeria's greatest strategic mistake would be to choose a foreign patron and confuse patronage with sovereignty.
America will pursue American interests.
China will pursue Chinese interests.
Russia will pursue Russian interests.
Nigeria must pursue Nigerian interests.
And Africa must finally understand that in the emerging multipolar world, the greatest danger may not be choosing the wrong great power.
It may be allowing great powers to choose Africa's future for Africans.
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