Blitz Bureau
DAKAR: It has been a tumultuous month for France and its relationship with former colonies in Africa, as its influence on the continent faces the biggest challenge in decades, according to an AP report. .
As Paris was devising a new military strategy that would sharply reduce its permanent troop presence in Africa, two of its closest allies struck a double blow, said the news agency report.
The Government of Chad, considered France’s most stable and loyal partner in Africa, announced on its Independence Day it was ending defense cooperation to redefine its sovereignty. And in an interview published hours later by Le Monde, Senegal’s new President said it was “obvious” that soon French soldiers wouldn’t be on Senegalese soil.
“Just because the French have been here since the slavery period doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do otherwise,” President Bassirou Diomaye Faye was quoted by saying by Associated Press.
Revival efforts
The announcements, reported AP, came as France was making efforts to revive waning influence on the continent. Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot was completing a visit to Chad and Ethiopia, and President Emmanuel Macron for the first time had recognized the killing of as many as 400 West African soldiers by the French Army in 1944.
French authorities stayed silent for almost 24 hours after Chad’s announcement, finally saying they were in “close dialogue” on the future of the partnership.
“Chad’s decision marks the final nail in the coffin of France’s post-colonial military dominance in the entire Sahel region,” said Mucahid Durmaz, a senior analyst at global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, referring to the arid region south of the Sahara.
The decisions by Senegal and Chad “are part of the wider structural transformation in the region’s engagement with France, in which Paris political and military influence continues to diminish,” Durmaz added. They follow the ousting of French forces in recent years by military-led governments in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, where local sentiments turned sour following years of French forces fighting alongside local ones in the face of stubborn Islamic extremist insurgencies.
