The Cold War wasn't limited to nuclear tensions and competitions between the great powers.

What's often overlooked is that major transformations took place in the 1950s and 60s across West Africa.

As power transferred from European powers like Britain and France

to new independent African nations,

change wasn't always smooth, and it wasn't always consistent. In fact, the French

and the British took very different approaches to decolonization, and these were plagued

by Cold War politics and influenced surprisingly by West Germany and by Israel

who were conducting their own competition on the continent and all of this packaged

together had stark implications for modern war, conflict and security in West

Africa today.

I'm your host James Rogers.

This is the Warfare Podcast and to take us through this history, we have Professor Marco Vice from Lancaster University.

Marco is the author of a new book, Post-colonial Security, Britain, France, and West Africa's Cold War.

That's published by Oxford University Press.

And so he is the perfect person to take us through this fascinating period. Hi Marco, welcome to Warfare. How are you doing today?

Hi James, I'm doing very well, slightly tired because of a flight, you're a bit tired

to potentially, but yeah, thanks for having having me but this topic is going to electrify us both kick us into action and engage us I have no doubt about that at all because it is really great to have you on the

podcast I've been fascinated for years now about the history of Western

intervention, politics, wars across the African continent and I've been fortunate enough to travel out and

work with colleagues in the Sahelle specifically Niger and across Ghana on

modern Western intervention in the region and also the rise of terrorism

around that region. But I'm really keen to hear from you about the history of all of

...