For the sixth installment of the Foreign Policy 101 series, let’s move to sub-Saharan Africa. We’ll take a look at U.S. policy in Nigeria. In most of these foreign policy posts, I approach policy through issues of war and peace. That’s a bit less useful in Nigeria, where economic issues loom large. The extraction of resources looms largest.

Oh, the U.S. fights wars in the region. But not as often as other places and not often at all in Nigeria. The U.S. has long been a Nigerian ally. It spends most of its time there managing its economic interests, especially via primitive accumulation. The U.S. state – and both U.S. and European NGOs – uses Nigeria as a place for gathering capital.

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