FRANÇAFRIQUE
By Ruby Pratka
When
François Hollande's face flashed on their TV screens, the people of Yopougon
rose and celebrated as if his presidential victory in France was their own.
"It's a big party here," local journalist Stéphane Goué said on
election night, from a friend's home in the working-class area of Abidjan, the
largest city in COTE D'IVOIRE. "Groups of people have come out into the
streets, and outside our house we hear horns honking."
SMOOTH TRANSITION TO INDEPENDENCE
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| Sahel and North African Hotspots |
Goings-on
in the Elysée Palace have interested—and affected—WEST AFRICANS for decades. In
FRENCH WEST AFRICA, the colonizer was not toppled in an uprising—no riots and
protest marches as in BRITISH GHANA, no bloody guerilla wars as in ALGERIA.
FRANCE divested itself of its AFRICAN colonies primarily to cut costs, due to
the lingering effects of the Second World War and the country's disastrous exit
from INDOCHINA in the 1950s. The leaders of the new independent states—MAURITANIA,
NIGER, MALI and CHAD in the north, SENEGAL, GUINEA, COTE D'IVOIRE, BENIN
BURKINA FASO and CAMEROON in the west, GABON and CONGO-BRAZZAVILLE in the
southwest, the CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC in the heart of the continent and the
tiny foothold of DJIBOUTI on the eastern coast—were uniformly FRENCH-trained,
and several had served in the FRENCH army during the Second World War. AFRICA'S
first post-Independence leaders had deep personal and professional links with FRANCE.
Before taking the reins of their own countries, SENEGAL'S Lépolod Sédar Senghor
had been a minister in the FRENCH cabinet, and IVOIRIAN leader Félix
Houphouet-Boigny a senator.
FRENCH MILITARY PRESENCE IN AFRICA
FRANCE
maintains military bases in GABON, CHAD and DJIBOUTI as well as a smaller
military presence in COTE D'IVOIRE and in Bangui, the restive capital of the CENTRAL
AFRICAN REPUBLIC. Defense accords signed with former colonies give the FRENCH
government priority in buying raw materials such as uranium. Economic links are
also strong; 15 of the young states use currencies that were pegged to the FRENCH
franc and are now linked to the Euro.
Background Information:
FRANCE AND THE CENTRAL AFRICAN
REPUBLIC
FRANCE reluctant to
be left alone to deal with another AFRICAN hotspot – MALI, CHAD and now the CENTRAL
AFRICAN REPUBLIC
CHAD
AND ITS OIL RESERVES
Mounting
border conflict with SUDAN may hinder economic development
FRENCH TELECOMMUNICATION FOOTHOLD ON THE CONTINENT
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| French Telecom (Orange) |
FRENCH
business conglomerates such as BOUYGUES, ORANGE and BOLLORÉ control large
portions of the telecommunications and shipping markets in WEST AFRICA, and COTE
D'IVOIRE in particular. "The FRENCH government is now an agent of FRENCH
business interests in AFRICA," observes André Silver Konan, an IVOIRIAN
journalist who covers WEST AFRICAN politics for the continent-wide newsmagazine
Jeune Afrique.
It
was Houphouet-Boigny, who ruled COTE D'IVOIRE for 30 years with several FRENCH
bureaucrats among his cabinet ministers, who coined the term "FRANÇAFRIQUE"
to describe the friendly relations between FRANCE and its former AFRICAN
empire.
AFRICAN NATIONS INFLUENCE IN FRENCH POLICIES
Houphouet-Boigny
used the word in a positive sense, but it didn't remain that way. In the
current FRENCH media, the word evokes a shadowy network of personal friendships
and money transfers that influence policy on both sides of the Atlantic.
"I give you your budget; I can do what I want," former President
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing apparently told Jean-Bédel Bokassa. D'Estaing had
helped finance Bokassa's grandiose wedding ceremony—worth one-fourth of the
annual budget of the country—before growing exasperated with his protegé's
wasteful spending and flirtation with Muammar Gaddafi—and throwing FRENCH military
support behind a 1979 student uprising that brought down the Bokassa regime. In
FRANCE, political campaigns were financed by oil and even aid money that AFRICAN
leaders—particularly longtime GABONESE President Omar Bongo—skim off and send
back to Paris, therefore manipulating FRENCH policy in their own way.
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| MALI troops on parade with French troops |
Since
François Mitterand in 1990, FRENCH presidents have tried to distance themselves
from the "old boys' club" of "occult networks" of FRANÇAFRIQUE.
However, it was on Mitterrand's watch that the biggest disaster of FRANÇAFRIQUE
occurred: a bungled military intervention in RWANDA—a former BELGIAN colony
whose president had worked closely with FRANCE— that allowed some perpetrators
of the 1994 genocide to escape across the CONGOLESE border.
PYROMANIAC
Early
in his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy declared his desire to "break
with" FRANÇAFRIQUE. But five years later, many AFRICANS don't see it that
way.
Sarkozy
"is a pyromaniac," says Chaibou Boubacar, editor-in-chief of Alternative
Espaces Citoyens magazine. "Based on a survey I did yesterday in the capital
[Niamey, NIGER], we're glad to be rid of him." The fires to which Boubacar
alludes are the FRENCH interventions in COTE D'IVOIRE and LIBYA.
"Our
president [Mahamadou Issoufou] has traveled to Paris 14 times in a little more
than a year," adds a resident of Niamey interviewed by Jeune Afrique.
"What does he need to go there so often for? FRANCE needs to give us our
independence back."
After
a close, disputed election in Cote d'Ivoire in fall 2010, socialist incumbent
President Laurent Gbagbo was widely believed to have lost but refused to give
up power. After several months of slow-burning civil conflict, a FRENCH
military intervention resulted in Gbagbo's arrest and installed his opponent,
Alassane Ouattara, as president. Ouattara, a former IMF economist, is a friend
and ideological ally of Sarkozy. His party, Rassemblement des Republicains,
even signed a collaboration accord with Sarkozy's Unis pour un Mouvement
Populaire shortly before the election.
"It's
true that Hollande is a socialist, like Gbagbo, but people here are just happy
to see Ouattara's puppet-master gone," says Goué.
FRANCE'S SUPPORT OF NATO INTERVENTION IN LIBYA,
also
left a bad taste in the mouths of many AFRICANS. Former LIBYAN leader Muammar
Gaddafi had invested millions in schools, mosques and infrastructure across AFRICA,
in the name of Islam and his dream of a "UNITED STATES OF AFRICA."
"Of
course [Gaddafi] was a dictator and a terrorist," Stéphane Goué says.
"But his assassination was a bad thing for all of us. He had helped us
solve a lot of international crises, especially in NIGER and in MALI."
Background Information:
LIBYA A FAILED STATE
Volatile
SAHEL region
LIBYA THE WILD WEST OF NORTHERN AFRICA
Porous borders turn LIBYA into radical
sanctuary
PRO GADDAFI FIGHTERS FLEEING LIBYA BROUGHT THEIR WEAPONS AND
SEPERPATIST TO MALI AND TORN IT IN TWO
In
MALI, many blame FRANCE for an escalating internal crisis. Migrants who had
worked in COTE D'IVOIRE and pro-Gaddafi fighters fleeing LIBYA brought their
desperation, and their weapons, to MALI. Many veterans of the LIBYAN conflict
joined the Tuareg separatist militias who have since torn MALI in two.
Background Information:
EU INVOLVEMENT IN MALI
Why the SAHEL is crucial to EUROPE'S
neighborhood – and its security strategy
THE URANIUM EQUATION
Sarkozy's
diplomatic record in AFRICA has not been all bad. He was the first FRENCH
president to receive post-genocide RWANDAN leader Paul Kagame, turning the page
on nearly 20 years of bad blood. Nor is Hollande everything AFRICA has been
looking for. It is not clear that he would have acted any differently given the
situations in COTE D'IVOIRE and LIBYA, and he plans to reduce FRENCH reliance
on nuclear energy—a disappointment for uranium-exporting NIGER.
However,
Sarkozy has alienated many AFRICANS with his occasionally anti-immigrant
rhetoric and what some see as a patronizing attitude toward the former
empire—epitomized in a 2007 speech in Dakar urging a university audience to
forgive the "mistakes" of well-intentioned colonists and calling AFRICAN
farmers "peasants."
With
Hollande, AFRICAN leaders expect "more partnership and less condescension,"
in the words of a CONGOLESE government spokesperson. Time will tell if they get
it.
Since
President Hollande's took over the rains, it appears that FRANCE may be on the
road to a new kind of presence in AFRICA. As Sarkozy left office, it became
public that his government had renegotiated post-colonial defense accords in AFRICA,
removing FRANCE'S prerogative to intervene in case of civil unrest. One of
Hollande's first acts was to rename the Ministry of Cooperation (which largely
handled relations with the ex-empire from Charles de Gaulle's time) the
Ministry of Cooperation and Development. In an interview with Jeune Afrique,
Hollande expressed his government's plan to "trust AFRICA to resolve the
questions which concern them directly."
While
Hollande himself has little experience in AFRICA, his appointed Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius knows Ouattara and has met with the presidents of TOGO,
GABON and Benin. Fabius has said he would like to "finish with the coups,
the announcements that are not followed up and all the convolutedness of FRANÇAFRIQUE."
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