Francafrique: Paris and the Challenge to Growing Chinese Influence in Africa

(To Gino Lanzara)
02/01/25

2024 has delivered in extremis to the new year the natural historical evolution of a country that has made greatness and imperialism its raison d'être; a constant projection that, however, has clashed with history and mistakes made over time.

Francafrique It is a journalistic term that harks back to the French Community of de Gaulle, along a path that begins in '58 and ends with Chirac in '95, a path inlaid with regime change, civil wars, military operations according to a neocolonialist paradigm.

Macron is only the epigone recipient of an impossible legacy that has guaranteed, for a long time, a strenuous resistance to Russian pervasiveness but that can do nothing, now, against the Dragon.. This was one of the reasons why the Elysée resisted so much, finding reason to propose itself as a reliable and above all irreplaceable ally.

But times have changed, France has given in Niger and now in Senegal and Chad: it is the end of an empire, of economic and military capabilities that cannot be restored at the moment, an aspect that cannot fail to affect the neighboring countries in a cascade, including ours in terms of migration. In the meantime, uranium is needed to guarantee the strike force.

Paris can no longer guarantee to be the gendarme of Africa. Probably also Jacques Foccart, the creator of the Francafrique, would agree on the need for a change of pace, far from Sarkozy's interventionism.

The CFA franc area will also have to be reevaluated, linked to the interests of Total, Bollorè, Havas, Eramet. It was inevitable to arrive in the central belt of the African continent to a political revision that creates spaces that cannot be tolerated and maintained in international relations.

The military presence cannot ignore the redefinition of security strategies, but the height cannot fail to take into account the political blows inflicted internally and externally.

An era has ended, but for Paris, in Africa, no solutions are in sight.

Photo: Ministère des Armées et des Anciens combattants