France - Africa Relations - Macron
President Emmanuel Macron on 02 March 2023 said the era of French interference in Africa was “well over” as he began a four-nation tour of the continent to renew frayed ties. Anti-French sentiment runs high in some former African colonies as the continent becomes a renewed diplomatic battleground, with Russian and Chinese influence growing in the region. Macron said France harbored no desire to return to past policies of interfering in Africa ahead of an environment summit in Gabon, the first leg of his trip.
“The age of Francafrique is well over,” Macron said in remarks to the French community in the capital Libreville, referring to France’s post-colonisation strategy of supporting authoritarian leaders to defend its interests. “Francafrique” is a favourite target of pan-Africanists, who say that after the wave of decolonisation in 1960 France propped up dictators in its former colonies in exchange for access to resources and military bases.
Ahead of his visit, Macron said there would be a “noticeable reduction” in France’s troop presence in Africa “in the coming months” and a greater focus on training and equipping allied countries’ forces. France had in the past year withdrawn troops from former colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. The pullout from Mali and Burkina Faso, where its soldiers were supporting the Sahel nations battle a long-running jihadist insurgency, came on the back of a wave of local hostility.
Macron insisted the planned reorganisation was “neither a withdrawal nor disengagement”, defining it as adapting to the needs of partners. More than 3,000 French soldiers were deployed in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Djibouti, according to official figures. Another 3,000 were in the Sahel region of West Africa, including in Niger and Chad.
Over 1,700 kilometers along the edge of the Sahara Desert, bypassing jihadist ambushes, avoiding impassable roads and tropical swamps. The dash made by French troops at the end of 2023 would have had all the makings of a romantic adventure, if it had not been under pressure from the state of Burkina Faso. Six months earlier, its authorities demanded that Paris evacuate its bases and got their way. The only way for the exiles to retreat was towards Chad, the last North African country to host French troops. 2024 passes between the Elysee Palace and N'Djamena, waiting for the domino effect. It became known that Chad ordered the withdrawal of the Americans from the Adji-Kossei base, and Paris fears that its troops could be next.
Chad has plenty of reasons to repatriate foreigners, but the main one is the low involvement of French troops stationed in the Sahara region to contain radical Islamists. This is also evidenced by statistics. Over more than 10 years (since 2013), Paris has suffered 58 casualties, which is nothing compared to the local casualties, which are much more numerous and, moreover, unpredictable. Thus, in 2021, Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno lost his life on the front line. Ironically, he arrived at the front line to celebrate his own inauguration, and there he came under fatal fire. That the French contribution is questionable is something that Idriss Déby's successor, Mahamat, has to take into account, as his main opponents include the jihadists. Their propaganda is, at least in part, based on criticism of the colonial order. Meanwhile, the French presence encourages many to think that the old days have never ended. This allows extremists to recruit the ignorant into their ranks, pushing the overall balance of foreign participation into a clear minus.
"In the countries of the Southern Sahara (Sahel), especially in Mali and Niger, many are convinced that French troops are actually pumping out natural resources for sale (oil, gas, uranium), and are not fighting terrorists," Senegalese economist and director of the Forum of African Alternatives Demba Moussa Dembele told TASS. "Some are even convinced that Paris is supporting terrorists in Northern Mali, as, for example, in the case of the city of Kidal. It was occupied by extremists for several years, and when the French withdrew their troops from Mali, the Malian army liberated Kidal and threw the terrorists out."
The leaders of countries that experienced anti-French coups in 2022-2023 (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) go further and accuse Paris of supporting Islamic radicals without equivocation. According to the head of the transitional government of Niger, Abdourahmane Tchiani, France is linked by secret cooperation with the jihadist group Boko Haram: "They [the French] proposed that these terrorists go into open war against the state in Niger, against the new authorities of Niger, who dared to demand that French soldiers leave their territory," exclaims Tchiani, whose accusations remained without an official response. In January 2024, the statesman returned to them again, accusing Paris of supplying two helicopters with military equipment to Boko Haram.
Suspicions, accepted by some and rejected by others, contribute to the alienation between the French and the locals. Sometimes, it only takes a match to ignite a flame. As in November 2021, when a French military convoy traveling from Niger to Mali was met with protests in the city of Tera and, although obliged to continue on its way, made an emotional stop. Three locals were killed and 17 injured in the clashes. But worse was yet to come for the French, when (partly under the influence of these events) a coup against Paris was carried out in Niger with the approval of the locals.
In 2008, Jacques Chirac, who had already left the post of President of France, dedicated several heartfelt lines to the Dark Continent: "We forget one thing. A large part of the banknotes in our wallets ended up there because we exploited Africa for centuries. Not only Africa. But a large part of the money came from there. So we need a little common sense, a little justice, to decide and return to the Africans what we took from them." The president's words accurately described the situation, but did not help change it. During Chirac's rule (and later, until 2024), a French state-owned company mined uranium in Niger. According to the revenue sharing agreement, only 12% remained in the local budget. Unsurprisingly, the revenue of the company, re-registered as Orano in 2018, exceeded the GDP of Niger, one of the three poorest countries on the planet.
Orano’s operations in Niger reinforced the impression among Africans that the French were only interested in extracting profits (including literally) from the depths of their homeland. As practice showed, European standards of social responsibility and environmental protection barely extended to distant countries. So, after the depletion of the large Kominak mine in 2019, hundreds of locals were suddenly left without work, surrounded by a ruined landscape and poisoned nature - the usual companions of predatory mining. Such losses deserve compensation, but the logic of relations between former colonizers and developing countries does not provide for anything like that.
The belief that French economic involvement is inextricably linked is based not only on criticism of individual companies, but on the path chosen by West and Central African countries in the 1960s. Their declaration of independence was accompanied by the signing of "cooperation treaties" with France, which resulted in the maintenance of a common currency system pegged to the French franc. In the early years of decolonization, other European monetary "zones" - sterling, escudo and peseta - were also maintained in Africa, but six decades later only the franc has survived. As in the days of Charles de Gaulle, African states are still deprived of the right to devalue their local currencies and are resigned to their overvalued exchange rates, which make any exports other than raw materials unprofitable.
In the 21st century, a movement had been launched to withdraw African countries from the former colonial franc zones. However, the economic situation complicates steps in this direction. The accumulated total debt is an obstacle - more precisely, bonds for 4.5 billion deposited in francs. Re-registration of these funds in new currencies is fraught with discrepancies depending on the country and exchange rate fluctuations, which foreshadows conflicts with holders of securities. Against this background, the paths of the states of former French Africa diverge: Mali, Bukina Faso and Niger announced their withdrawal from the franc zone in order to create their own currency. Other states intend to transform the monetary union that exists, replacing francs with a new unit - the eco.
Irritated by the distortions in economic ties and dissatisfied with the French military, Africa may have harbored a grudge, but it has not lost interest in Europe. However, on the other side, things are different: the Old World, it seems, is not ready to hold the door open for it. In 1986, Paris introduced visas for citizens of its former colonies. In 2011, they were supplemented by the "Guéant circular" - a decision by the Ministry of the Interior to tighten the issuance of residence permits for students from the Black Continent, designed to reduce their number in France.
Although issuing visas is a natural practice in relations between countries, there is a difference in the favoured-nation regimes. Obtaining French visas for Africans requires an extreme amount of paperwork, which results in excesses at the highest level: difficulties in obtaining visas have been noted, for example, by the leadership of the Central African Republic. It is even more difficult to obtain the right to enter for those who do not have privileges. Making no secret of its intentions, France itself is seeking to reduce exchanges, fearing an increase in illegal migration.
There are indeed grounds for pessimistic expectations. African countries are not only among the poorest on the planet (the poorest is French-speaking Burundi), but also set demographic records (first place goes to French-speaking Niger). People from these countries who speak French to some extent see moving, including illegally, as a profitable opportunity, and sometimes simply find themselves superfluous in their homeland. Fearing the explosive population growth in Africa, France itself is putting relations with it on hold.
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