France's African strategy has not yet overcome neocolonial inertia, it is based on an inadequate assessment of its own capabilities, which works to the advantage of the global majority, writes Alexey Chikhachev, Senior Lecturer at the Department of European Studies in the Faculty of International Relations at St. Petersburg State University, Leading Expert at the Center for Strategic Studies, Institute for Global Military Economics and Strategy, HSE University. The author is a participant of the Valdai – New Generation project.
The year 2024 saw a new series of painful failures for France's foreign policy in Africa. On the one hand, three countries that had previously been the focus of its strategy – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – continued their earlier course of liberation from neocolonial influence, having formed their own Confederation of Sahel States. On the other hand, even those partners that Paris still counted on as its reliable outposts, be it Senegal or Chad, unexpectedly demanded a complete withdrawal of foreign troops from their territory.
The first weeks of 2025 brought news, logically complementing the above-described context: the French base in Abidjan will be transferred under the control of the Ivorian authorities, the transfer of military facilities to the Senegalese and Chadian authorities has already begun in practice. . All this is symptomatic of the fact that the Fifth Republic, once accustomed to treating Africa as its "backyard", is rapidly losing ground on the continent, while the opportunities to influence this process from the Palais de l'Élysée are becoming fewer and fewer. It is characteristic that at the official level, the current leadership continues to pretend that nothing critical is happening. In a speech in January to the diplomatic corps, President Emmanuel Macron said that France is “not retreating, but rebuilding”: it is allegedly voluntarily abandoning the “obsessions” of the colonial past, and is ready for an equal dialogue on complex issues of historical memory, security, and economic and cultural cooperation. According to his logic, the root cause of some erosion of former authority is not at all in the mistakes of France itself, but in the malicious influence (including informational one) on the part of competitors - primarily Russia. To Macron's surprise, the Sahel countries "forgot to say thank you" for the neo-colonial Operation Barkhane, which lasted from 2014 to 2022, because without French troops "no one of them would be sovereign now." Moreover, according to him, Paris ended the operation on its own initiative and similarly began to curtail its military presence outside the Sahel, "out of courtesy", allowing the host countries to simply announce it first. In addition, the president expressed ambitions to expand contacts with non-Francophone Africa, as well as with part of the Maghreb, where rapprochement with Morocco regarding the Western Sahara issue (at the cost of another crisis in Franco-Algerian relations) has become another major shift in recent times.
Paris had high hopes for the mission of Jean-Marie Bockel, the President's Special Envoy for African Affairs. On behalf of the president, he was to define new parameters for the military presence in the continent, coordinating them with the host countries - the number of French troops from country to country, their tasks, and the specifics of interaction with local armies. By and large, his job was to create the appearance of a willingness to cooperate and identify specific areas for saving forces, while at the same time preserving at least some military and political levers for France. Throughout 2024, the publication of the report on the mission's results was repeatedly postponed (one of the reasons for which was, apparently, the chaos in the government), and as a result, the text was handed over to Macron last November without being openly disclosed - which is not typical for French practice. Only a few excerpts from the report circulated in the press, which made it clear that the presence of contingents from the former metropolis, although reduced (a total of 600 people in Chad, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon instead of the previous 2,300), would not disappear completely; they would take on the tasks of carrying out special operations, reconnaissance, and training local armies. There was no talk at all about another strategically important point - Djibouti, where about 1,500 soldiers and officers serve. One way or another, the report lost its meaning in a matter of weeks, because the same Chad and Senegal demanded a complete withdrawal, without delays and reservations. Bockel himself later admitted that the new position of the Chadian authorities was an unexpected development for him. Both Macron's reasoning and Bockel's mission demonstrate the main problem with France's Africa policy at the present stage, which consists in the unwillingness to recognise the real state of affairs and, accordingly, an incorrect assessment of its own capabilities. The current French leader likes to emphasise that he became the first president of the country born after formal decolonisation, from which it would seem that a commitment to an equal and mutually respectful approach should automatically follow. However, in fact, as the leader of Chad, Mahamat Idriss Déby, said, Macron, demanding gratitude for the military presence, simply "missed the era," reproducing the worst example of thinking in the style of the Françafrique neocolonial strategy. This is not a one-time slip of the tongue, made with emotion, since in 2017 Macron began his African policy with a scandalous joke about “air conditioning repair”, to which he “sent” the then leader of Burkina Faso Roch Kabore. As a result, patience is running out even among the African elites that for decades were accustomed to orienting themselves towards Paris, as in the case of the same Deby clan in Chad.
It is important to note that the African strategy of the current authorities has drawn criticism even from experts at loyal think tanks. Thus, researcher Thierry Vircoulon (IFRI) in a note published simultaneously with the end of Bockel's mission, came to the conclusion that the Palais de l'Élysée is engaged in half measures that will not satisfy “neither those nostalgic for military cooperation, nor African governments seeking protection." Instead of abstract and insincere discussions about a "new model" of defence contacts, which have been heard from the mouths of various presidents of the Fifth Republic more than once, it would be worthwhile to "demilitarise" Franco-African relations, i.e. to focus on other areas where Paris could still be interesting as a partner. In other words, it is necessary to use additional trump cards that French diplomacy as a whole still has, including, first of all, the CFA franc and the cultural and linguistic potential (the International Organisation of Francophonie, whose summit was held in 2024 in France). According to Bockel, Paris needs to more actively involve the EU countries in the African agenda, to rely on a pan-European approach - which, however, is also largely an attempt to pass off wishful thinking as reality, because the internal competition between Western countries for influence in Africa has not disappeared.
However, the more persistently French diplomacy continues to deny obvious things and persists in attempts to preserve elements of its former influence, the wider the window of opportunity opens for the World Majority in general and Russia in particular. African countries, which have never received a truly respectful attitude from the former metropolis, are joining the growing circle of powers that share the value of sovereignty in international relations and advocate a multipolar world order.
Escape from neocolonial pressure creates a reserve for finding alternative partners, including in the security sphere, which Russia has already successfully used, having ensured its presence, for example, in the Central African Republic or Mali. Among the countries that have only recently announced the withdrawal of French troops, Senegal looks the most promising in this regard, through which, according to the assessment of Russian experts, it is possible to organise logistics routes to support Russia's further presence on the continent (both military and economic - in the event of the impossibility of maintaining bases in Tartus and Khmeimim in Syria).
Be that as it may, the fundamental difference between the Russian and French approach to Africa remains genuine, rather than declarative, respect for mutual interests, which will remain on the agenda in 2025.
