Africa Has The Whole World Knocking — What’s An Old Colonist Like France To Do?

-Analysis-

PARIS — Last week, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Africa for his first tour this year — as he has done every year for over three decades. Through this assiduity and major investments, China has become Africa’s leading partner in the space of three decades.

This week, Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, is criss-crossing the continent, with at least one stopover in common with his Chinese counterpart: Abidjan. It’s no coincidence that the United States has reinvested itself in diplomacy and cooperation with the African continent, after years of neglect that saw the rise of China.

Third image: Mahamat Idriss Déby, president of Chad, wearing a white grand boubou, next to Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The image is unusual: Chad has French troops on its soil, and Emmanuel Macron attended the funeral of the current president’s father, who was killed in action in 2021, and endorsed a questionable hereditary succession. The Russian visit may therefore come as a surprise, especially as Chad has condemned the invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations.

Courting a Continent

It would be a mistake to regard every contact or visit as a sign of old-fashioned alignment, even if this can sometimes be the case, as for Sahel. Africa, as the continent’s specialist Antoine Glaser put it so nicely on France24, “has the whole world in its waiting room”.

There isn’t a power, large or medium, that isn’t courting Africa today.

Russians, Chinese, Americans, Europeans, but also Indians, Turks, Iranians, Brazilians, Koreans or Japanese — there isn’t a power, large or medium, that isn’t courting Africa today. In search of influence, market share or rare minerals: the motivations are manifold, but the African continent, despite its immense development problems, wars and putschist generals, remains unavoidable.

This trend predates the invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago, but the emancipation of African countries from traditional alliances came to the fore then. And it has continued to grow. South Africa’s unprecedented role in the complaint against Israel before the International Court of Justice was another example.

France on the sidelines

As for France, once a superpower in Africa, it is undoubtedly paying the price for not having sufficiently anticipated this aspiration towards multi-alignment, a concept preferred to the non-alignment of yesteryear.

This is a major challenge.

France is on the sidelines, having for too long continued to act as guardian of an Africa from which its companies had long since largely disengaged; where its most visible part was military. This era is coming to an end, with the eviction of French troops from the Sahel.

France has not yet reinvented its relationship with French-speaking Africa, but it does not lack assets: those of the African diaspora in France, of culture, of language. In any case, this is a major challenge, provided we avoid the pitfalls of power rivalries, which exist in Africa as elsewhere; and also avoid the complex of the former colonizer who feels that everything is his. From now on, influence has to be earned; and France, from this point of view, has some progress to make.