The economic and business side of US AFRICOM on the continent: agreements, land lease, aid, corporations and base expansion in Djibouti

This chapter provides a precise historical account of how the United States (US) and Djibouti reached an agreement to lease US Africa Command (AFRICOM)’s only publicly acknowledge military base. Djibouti is a “sandwiched” country hosting French, German, Italian, US, Japanese and Chinese military bases, a token of its painstaking, quite lucrative, great power equilibrium policy. Since the end of the Cold War, US military deployment in Djibouti evolved through four main stages, that is, a trial phase; the gradual establishment of a soft presence; the ongoing building of a permanent military base and the setting up of the de facto forward operating military hub of AFRICOM; operational since 2008. On 1 July 2006, in order to make better use of Camp Lemonnier, the US transferred the jurisdiction over the base from the US Marine Corps to the US Navy. When Barack Obama assumed the presidency in 2009, the US Lemonnier base carried out multiple functions.