French president stirs anger with attempt to recast ‘Francafrique’
yesterday by: David Pilling
When an Ivorian journalist asked Emmanuel Macron how much G20 countries were “ready to put in the envelope to save Africa”, the French president embarked on a discourse about the continent’s “civilisational” challenge that stirred anger both in France and in Africa.
Among the continent’s problems, he listed failing states, democratic shortfalls and an exploding population. Mr Macron was rounded on for his supposedly patronising, even racist, tone. Some said it echoed the notorious 2007 speech by Nicolas Sarkozy, in which the former French president told a Senegalese audience that the tragedy of Africa was that “the African has not fully entered into history”.
The French president’s choice of word, perhaps unwittingly, echoed France’s “mission civilisatrice”, its conviction that it could make French citizens out of its African subjects. That mission, as many have pointed out, involved collaboration with a Catholic church not exactly known for its promotion of birth control. Poverty, not lack of civilisation, was responsible for a high birth rate, critics fumed, which in any case averages 5.2 in sub-Saharan Africa, not the “seven to eight” cited by Mr Macron.
France’s new president had his defenders, too. In Foreign Policy magazine, Nigerian writer Remi Adekoya said the word “civilisational” was bound to raise hackles, but that the president’s analysis was broadly correct. “Macron pointed to three major challenges facing the continent today: demography, democracy, and failing states. He was right on all counts.”
The intensity of the debate, both in France and in Africa, stems from the close, almost stifling, ties that Paris maintains with its former colonies. In a relationship known as Francafrique, France guarantees the CFA franc in two currency blocs covering 14 African nations, maintains military bases in Gabon, Senegal and Djibouti, and has been happy to intervene militarily from Mali to Chad. French is still an official language in 19 African countries.
The term Francafrique was coined by Felix Houphouet- Boigny, the first president of Ivory Coast — or Republique de Côte d’Ivoire — who meant to highlight the positive ties that bound the former colonies with Mother France. A Le Monde-reading, French-educated former tribal chief, Mr Houphouët-Boigny served in the French government before becoming president of his own nation at independence in 1960, a position he held — with France’s support — until his death in 1993.
The term Francafrique gradually took on more negative undertones. It came to symbolise what Nicolas Germain, an Africa specialist at France 24, calls the “murky relationship between France and its former colonies”. In return for protection of France’s considerable business and strategic interests, Paris would prop up unsavoury leaders from Senegal to Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, who would in turn back French politicians financially. The late economist Francois-Xavier Verschave defined Francafrique as a “secret criminality” and rechristened it “France a fric”, where “fric” is slang for cash.
Ben Shepherd, a consulting fellow at Chatham House’s Africa Programme, says there are signs that France is seeking to “evolve”, though it has stopped short of handing over Africa policy to its development agency as Britain has effectively done. Still, François Hollande, the former president, was credited with closing, at least partially, what Mr Germain calls “a dodgy backdoor to the Elysee Palace”. Where once Paris would support African leaders almost unconditionally, now cases of alleged embezzlement by family members of African strongmen regularly appear in French courts.
Mr Macron, too, has talked about ending Francafrique. Perhaps his rejection of the idea that everything can be solved with French money was meant to signal a break with the past. If so, he might have to try again.