For many states in Africa there are other, even more historic reasons at play. In Soviet times, Moscow poured arms into the continent as it sought to confront US and Western influence from the Sahara to the Cape. In some places, a legacy of western European colonisation in the 19th and 20th centuries is a lasting resentment of the West that plays out even today. France, which rushed troops into Mali in 2013 - to prevent an Al-Qaeda takeover of the whole country - is not popular in its former colony. So now the bulk of French troops have left, to be replaced by the Kremlin-backed Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group.