France-Africa: the meaning of a snub

LThis snub is all the more scathing because it is double. At the same time as, Thursday, November 28, Chad announced the termination of its defense agreement with France, Senegal made it known that it no longer wanted the presence of French soldiers on its soil either. The motivation of the two countries for demanding the closure of the military bases which they had wanted to maintain since their independence in 1960 is almost identical. The time has come for Chad to“assert one’s full and complete sovereignty”declared the authorities of N'Djamena, while, in an interview with The Worldthe president of Senegal, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, affirmed: “Why would we need French soldiers in Senegal? (…) This does not correspond to our conception of sovereignty and independence. »

The news announced by N'Djamena just after a visit by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, took Paris by surprise. Just like the declaration of Mr. Diomaye Faye, published at the very moment when Emmanuel Macron made a memorial gesture towards Senegal, by officially recognizing that the French colonial forces had committed a « massacre » in Thiaroye, near Dakar, on 1^is December 1944, a hidden reality.

The blow is severe, particularly in Chad, the first colony to join Free France, used as a real French “aircraft carrier” in Africa for decades and where a thousand French soldiers are stationed, while around 350 are in Dakar. After the forced departure of French soldiers from Mali in 2022, Burkina Faso and Niger in 2023, this is a new serious setback for Paris.

A strategy of small steps that is difficult to read

If the modes of government differ widely in the two countries – an authoritarian military regime in N'Djamena, a democracy led by an “anti-system” pan-Africanist duo in Dakar – the refusal of the French military presence responds to the same context: its rejection by a large part of the public, notably young people, and the multiple offers of service (American but also Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Saudi or Israeli) which are now the recipients of African heads of state.

It is for having delayed in learning the lessons of this globalization of the continent, particularly that affecting its former colonies where it has felt “at home” for too long, that France is thus sanctioned. After claiming to be the bearer of new relations with Africa, freed from the weight of the colonial past, Emmanuel Macron adopted, under the influence of part of French political and military circles, a strategy of small steps that are difficult to read, aiming at maintaining a reduced and more discreet presence. The ambiguity of certain African leaders for whom French soldiers have long served as life insurance has not helped.

But rather than posing the clear prospect of negotiated withdrawal that the situation requires, Mr. Macron tried to gain time by appointing a “personal envoy”, Jean-Marie Bockel, whose report, finally submitted on Monday November 25 and remained confidential, has just been largely swept away by the decisions of Dakar and N'Djamena. It is now urgent for the French executive to gain insight, clarity and coherence, otherwise it is condemned to being, like these days, a step behind African realities and to being singled out, for the benefit of the continent’s new predatory “friends”.