I don't a substantial knowledge of post-colonial leaders in this region, and my research would be severely limited by lack of fluency in French. However, PODs that change a single individual are quite feasible. It's hard to make substantial changes to the world map, but a single individual can die in a plane crash/car accident/ship sinking, or experience a change in their life (travel to a specific location abroad or POD during university years that leave them with different politics.
Its economy would likely have faster and more stable economic growth than its OTL constituent countries as well. Economies like Cote D'Ivoire are highly dependent on a commodity like cocoa beans which they can't control the price of, and its probably much harder to diversify a smaller economy. I guess that Dakar would be the Port city, Bamako would be the capital, and Timbuktu would be a university city with colleges and Madrassas. If the federation includes Niger it would have the uranium for a nuclear energy program.Mali is an interesting country because it more or less corresponds to the pre-colonial Toucoulour Empire.
French West Africa as a single Federal Unit (which we could just as easily call the Federation of Mali) would be intriguing. The whole country would have 110 million people, which is neat still smaller than the population of Nigeria.
Given that such a country is likely to be rather left-wing, Pan-Africanist and involved in sabre-rattling with South Africa, I presume you mean "energy", nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean?
I chose Bamako because it was centrally located in French West Africa. Even if the federation started out with Dakar as the capital city, it would probably move the capital inland to compromise between the regions the way Nigeria moved its capitol from Lagos to Abuja as a North-South compromise.
Nope, I meant an actual nuclear energy program. The OTL French metropole gets a majority of its energy from nuclear power and has one of the most competitive nuclear energy industries in the world. This West African federation could agree to grant France continued access to Nigerien uranium reserves and/or nuclear testing sites in the Sahara in return for a joint venture with an African utility company, a contract for power plants to be be built in West Africa by French companies, or scholarships for young physicists and engineers to study in France.
Really? I could see that but think this bloc will develop some Instasun (tm) to ward off Pretoria.
French West Africa and South Africa are on opposite ends of the continent, I don't see how they'd be a threat to each other.
I doubt a United French West Africa would want to dump resources into a nuclear weapons program.
Probably much smaller than that. The interlinking of the country as a federal unit means migration restrictions (I can't underestimate how insane West Africa's migration restrictions are) are lessened and urbanization starts up earlier, which gets the demographic transition to begin ahead of schedule.
This right here, West Africa's current political economy has the worst of both worlds when it comes to country size and integration. Europe's smaller states (Slovenia, Montenegro, Baltic States) are economically successful in a wider international environment of regional integration and lack of borders, trade restrictions, or migration barriers. If there was still an interwar-era mess of tariffs, quotas, and migration restrictions, then the map of Europe would be made up of a smaller number of larger countries, and places like Kosovo or Slovenia would just be autonomous regions of a larger state.
