Summing up the French failures in Africa, and particularly in Mali, the US The National Interest concluded that «the era of French diplomatic dominance on the continent, which lasted for more than 100 years, has come to an end, and Paris’ claims of being one of the leading geopolitical players and a privileged partner of African countries have been seriously undermined».
The reasons for these French failures in Africa, as noted by the EU Institute for Security Studies, lie in the fact that Paris, in its unstoppable desire to play a leading role in the Sahel, stopped taking into account serious changes in the region associated with an unprecedented increase in anti-French sentiment, as well as geopolitical shifts in a multipolar world.
It got to the point that during one of the demonstrations near a military base in Niamey, the capital of Niger, witnessed by a reporter from The New York Times, protesters demanding the withdrawal of French troops carried a coffin intended for the French president and waved placards reading «death to France». In this regard, as the newspaper notes, the refusal of E. Macron to withdraw his troops from the country and to recall his ambassador looked «untenable and unacceptable», according to most analysts and even European and French diplomats.
Assessing the vicissitudes of the Niger-French confrontation, the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat sees «the absence of any logic and a complete loss of a sense of reality» in Paris’ actions, which could lead to new military coups in the former French colonies, strengthen the position of terrorists and increase the flow of African migration to Europe, primarily hurting the interests of France itself. The subsequent events in Gabon and Senegal confirmed the correctness of the conclusions of Saudi analysts.
We are witnessing a serious geopolitical shift
According to The Middle East Eye, anti-French sentiment in Mali was no less intense. Here it became so acute that part of the local population, after 10 years of unsuccessful struggle by French troops against terrorists on its territory, began to see France not so much as a liberating, but an occupying force.
In the end, French TV channel France 24 was forced to admit that President E. Macron’s policy brought the country to the point where its former colonies, expressing dissatisfaction with the French military presence, began to respond to Paris with ‘kicks in its soft spot’. After the CAR, Mali and Burkina Faso, Paris was met with the same in Niger, which, according to Anthony Blinken, was the «model of democracy» in Africa.
The publication Middle East Monitor, published in London with Qatari financing – France maintains privileged relations with Qatar – also notes that the events in Niger were another piece of convincing evidence of the growth of anti-French sentiments and the rejection of the French colonial heritage by the African population.
What did the French policy of interventionism lead to?
In this regard, The British Economist, for example, with reference to public opinion polls on the reputation of France in Côte d’Ivoire, the stronghold of French influence in Africa, notes that less than half of Ivorians trust the former metropolis. 65% of them believe that France can win them over if it withdraws all troops from West Africa.
According to the US publication Truthout, the policy of interventionism is at the heart of Paris’ failures in Africa. For decades after African countries’ gaining independence, Paris continued to interfere in their affairs, receiving the resources it needed at discounted prices in exchange for the support of their corrupt leaders and deterring encroachments on its interests from other foreign players.
This led to increased repression against the opposition, the emergence of local conflicts and coups d’état, which radically changed the political landscape of the Sahel, destabilizing it.
In the end, Truthout concludes, the military Operation Barkhane had a counterproductive effect, instead supporting jihadist propaganda about the malignity of the Western presence, giving rise to anti-French sentiments in local circles, related to Paris’ inability after ten years of fighting terrorism to end this evil in Africa.
The policy of the last French presidents opened Pandora’s box
The Gulf News newspaper published in Dubai notes that the latest series of coups d’état in the Sahel showed the depth of disagreement between the states of the region and France. They were especially acute in Paris’ relations with Niger, which gives reason to assert that «today we are witnessing a serious geopolitical shift that will have far-reaching consequences not only for the continent, but also beyond its borders».
France’s Africa policy has been criticised not only by the expert community of African countries and world think tanks, but also by official representatives of the European Union. During an aggravation of the Libyan crisis, when a huge wave of African refugees flooded Europe, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development Luigi Di Maio in January 2019, accused France of continuing to colonise Africa and called on the EU to impose sanctions against it.
His colleague, former Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, said that France is pumping out Africa’s natural resources. In his opinion, the influx of illegal migrants from Libya is due to the fact that France, with its colonial policy, has created unbearable conditions for the inhabitants of Francophone Africa to survive and does not aid its economic development.
The same point of view is shared by the current Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who, commenting on the origins of the military coup in Burkina Faso, noted that this was an expected reaction to the deep socio-political crisis engulfing this country, whose population, despite being the fourth-largest producer of gold on the continent, is in deep poverty, as most of the country’s export earnings are deposited in French banks.
In short, the policy of the last three French presidents has opened Pandora’s box to the spread of terrorist activities in the Sahel, which has led to France’s humiliating failures in this region today.
Summing up the results of the French military presence in the Sahel, the Institute for Security Studies of South Africa states that “the strategy of Paris in recent years in this subregion has suffered a crushing defeat”. The French president’s hopes of creating an effective military coalition of African and European countries to fight jihadism failed, as the former did not have the necessary financial and other resources, and the latter avoided large-scale participation due to the lack of prospects for solving this problem according to the French vision.
In France itself, the military intervention in the Sahel, which in local circles was called the «French Afghanistan», began to lose public support. Public opinion polls have shown that since the middle of 2021, 51% of French people oppose its further continuation.
In addition to the loss of political prestige, the cost of holding such an intervention was estimated at 1 billion euros annually. During the 2022 presidential campaign, E. Macron’s rivals accused him of that his policy on Africa had led to France being «humiliated» in Mali and its international credibility had suffered «serious moral damage».
As noted by the US POLITICO, E. Macron himself is trying to present the expulsion of France from the Sahel not as his personal failure, but as a fiasco of his Western military coalition in the region, as a result of which, according to Le Temps, referring to the assessments of the expert community, «the times when Paris could dictate its will to African leaders are irrevocably over and the strategy itself, which is based on military intervention in the internal affairs of its partners, has become a historical anachronism».
The failure of E. Macron in the Sahel, POLITICO continues, especially the ‘expulsion of France from Niger’, once again very clearly highlighted the need for Paris to urgently review its relations with African countries, primarily by reducing its military presence on the continent, which, according to experts at Queen Mary University of London, «began to have a counterproductive effect, and if Paris wants to preserve it, it must be integrated into the EU structures, which will enable France to rid itself of the ‘gendarme of Africa’ label».
Viktor GONCHAROV, Africa expert, Candidate of Sciences in Economics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
