It reads like the blockbuster you pick up at the airport. A convoy of trucks laden with 1000 tonnes of uranium seized from a mine in Niger is trying to make its way to an Atlantic port so it can be shipped to a mystery buyer, possibly Russia.

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The options are limited for landlocked Niger. The safest route would be through neighbouring Benin but that country has been at loggerheads with Niger since Niger's military seized power in 2023 and was implicated in a failed Beninois coup last December.

The other option involves running the gauntlet of bandits and jihadist insurgents in Burkina Faso, with the prospect of the yellowcake falling into the hands of a group affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Unthinkable? Yes. Fiction? No.

The French call it the Mad Max convoy. They've taken a deep interest because the mine involved used to be owned by a French company but was nationalised last June by Niger's military junta. The rest of the world ought to take notice as well because it's another dimension to the breakdown of the rules-based order, where international agreements and protocols governing the sale and shipment of uranium are no longer observed. Foreign Policy magazine calls this new normal the "Mad Max World Order".

For years, our attention has been focused on the actions of the major powers which have frayed the fabric of the rules based world order: China, Russia and lately the US.

But the unfolding drama in West Africa demonstrates that it's not only the big players dispensing with the rule book. Much smaller and inherently more unstable players like Niger are doing it too, peddling a dangerous resource on the open market and taking huge risks to get it to the buyer.

The Sahel region of Africa has been the centre of what's been dubbed the "coup belt" after a string of military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Niger, Sudan and Gabon. Running parallel to the coups, a jihadist insurgency has also fuelled instability........

© Canberra Times