France's Shocking Expulsion from Africa

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The year 1960, has been called the year of Independence for most African states, but was it truly an independence? Earlier this year 2023, French President Macron, speaking ahead of a four-country African tour promised a “new era” for France’s ties with the continent, based on a “partnership” of equals. He said that the French military base in Africa would henceforth be jointly run by local armed forces, with a “visible reduction” of French soldiers on the ground. It was to be a new phase in the Franco-African reset that Mr Macron first laid out in a speech in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, in 2017, vowing that he was “of a generation that doesn’t come to tell Africans what to do”.

Even prior to this time, French relationship with Africa seemed to have improved. President Macron increased aid to the continent, began the return of cultural artefacts stolen during the colonial wars, which has been a long source of resentment, to Benin and Senegal and reached out beyond the usual inter-government ties to engage younger generations and civil society. He kept that have killed so many local civilians, police and soldiers, supported the regional bloc Ecowas as it tries to defend electoral politics against military takeovers and promised to end the cfa franc, a France-backed regional currency. He even flew to Rwanda in 2022 to apologize and publicly acknowledge French failures during the 1994 genocide.

However, in the last few months, France's relationship with Africa has greatly deteriorated. Anti-French feelings have ignited in most of France's former colonies and the country has now become the target of African criticism.

In 2013, Paris militarily intervened in Mali to beat back jihadists who were advancing from the north and threatening to overrun the government in the capital Bamako. The operation was successful and the elected government was saved, but any credit has long since disappeared because despite a heavy French presence afterward, the insurgency continued to spread, with the violence spilling over into neighboring countries and now threatening communities all over the Sahel region beneath the Sahara desert.

In November 2021, a convoy of French troops heading north to support the fight against Islamist militants was repeatedly blockaded by protesters as it crossed Burkina Faso and Niger. Also, in the past few years, among progressive West African commentators and urban youth, there has been a call for the abolition of the CFA Franc, the regional currency used by many francophone countries and which is pegged to the euro under a French government guarantee.

One of the most defining moments however of the decline in France’s relationship in Africa was the European power’s retreat and announcement of the end of Operation Barkhane, launched in 2014 to eliminate armed groups in the Sahel region in Africa and curb their influence. This withdrawal is often seen as a shift in the relations between France and Africa, not just between France and Mali.

Operation Barkhane was France’s largest overseas operation, with a budget of nearly €600m per year. It engaged in everything from combat patrols alongside Malian forces and partner militias to intelligence gathering and training to local development activities. The force, with approximately 4,500 soldiers, was spread out between Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. While its headquarters is in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, it also has fighter aircraft and bases for intelligence collection and operations in Niger’s capital Niamey, Agadez, Arlit, Tillabéry, and several other sites, as well as around 1,500 troops in northern Mali scattered between the large base at Gao, others at Kidal, Timbuktu, and Tessalit, and more recently a base at Gossi closer to central Mali as well as the border with Burkina Faso.

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