Françafrique: Paris’ Monroe Doctrine

In 1884, European powers convened for the Berlin Conference, hosted by German statesman Otto Von Bismarck, to effectively partition Africa, demarcating the large swaths of territory between competing empires.

France staked its claim to much of West Africa, and a landlocked region, which would become the Central African Republic, just north of Belgian King Leopold’s Congo. Africa was carved, with only Ethiopia and Liberia remaining independent.

A depiction of a map of Africa in 1844 with ethno-linguistic boundaries prior to European colonization. (Credit: Nikolaj Cyon)

As decolonization movements swept Africa in the 1960’s, some relatively amicable, some protractedly violent, like Angola’s brutal war of independence from Portugal, France maintained structural control of its former African empire.

The enduring, extended sphere of French influence, known as “Françafrique,” was established by Charles De Gaulle, and overseen by France’s top adviser on African affairs, the late Jacques Foccart, responsible for a host of covert operations on the continent.

Françafrique’s framework ranges “from the politics of cordial exchange and cooperation to that of covert actions and violent military intervention that the French have been known for perpetrating in different parts of Africa since the 1960s,” according to Dr. Lansine Kaba of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar.

Françafrique can be likened to the Monroe Doctrine, which placed Latin America under American political, economic, and military influence.

Economically, Paris pulls the strings through the CFA Franc, a colonial-era currency that is still in use today across West Africa and in the Central African Republic, where monetary policy and currency valuation is controlled by the French treasury.

The foreign reserves of France’s former colonies must also be deposited into accounts controlled exclusively by the treasury. At the height of the European recession in 2011, France devalued the CFA Franc in order to “cushion” its own financial burden.

“Mali without France is like a car without gas” -heard on radio in bamako today

— Joe Penney (@joepenney) February 25, 2014

Militarily, France has intervened on several occasions during civil strife. In the Ivory Coast, French warplanes wiped out the Ivorian air force after it had carried out strikes in the rebel-held north. And, in the Central African Republic, France repeatedly bombed the abjectly destitute northeastern city of Birao, which had risen up against Paris’ propped up strongman, Bozizé.

The Séléka rebels which eventually overthrew Bozizé originate from the region that houses the remnants of Birao.

Under President Francois Hollande, France has begun flexing its muscle more overtly. Paris maintains a network of military bases and troop outposts across its former empire, and was perfectly poised to intervene in Mali when hardline, Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters hijacked a Tuareg separatist war against Bamako.

Paris has invoked Françafrique to intervene, again, in the Central African Republic with a mandate to protect civilians and ease the humanitarian bedlam caused by a conflagration of factions at each other’s throats. But what needs to emphasized is France’s deeply entrenched economic interests in the extraction of resources of its former colony.

French military presence in Africa. (Graphic Credit: Radio France Internationale)

(Feature photo credit: AP/Jerome Delay)

Pawns of Power: A brief history of the Central African Republic’s Instability

The Central African Republic, as its name suggests, is located in a strategic crossroads of central Africa.

Bordered by Chad, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, and Cameroon, the country’s perennial political plight – a series of coups have haunted its development since 1960 – has been at the whim of neighboring dictators and erstwhile colonial power, France, which maintains a stalking presence across much of its vast former African empire.

Like the Democratic Republic of Congo to the south, a hot bed of separatism and resource-fueled atrocity, the Central African Republic is lush with vital minerals, including gold, tin, copper, diamonds, and, perhaps most important, an almost entirely untapped reserve of uranium.

The projected yield of the Bakouma mines in the southeast have been of particular interest to global energy giants, especially French nuclear giant, Areva.

In December of 2012, a loose coalition of rebel forces from the north of the Central African Republic began an offensive towards the capital, Bangui, in a bid to overthrow Francois Bozize, who had taken power in his own coup a decade prior with significant help from Chadian President Idriss Déby.

The predominantly Muslim Séléka rebels, named after the Songo language word for “alliance,” comprised of dissident factions from a slew of northern armed groups that collectively signed a ceasefire agreement with Bozizé under the 2008 Libreville Comprehensive Peace Accord in the Gabonese capital.

In the post-colonial ethno-linguistic mosaic of the Central African Republic, those who seize power tend to, in turn, empower their ethnic group. Bozizé stocked his closest circles with his fellow Gbaya people, the largest linguistic group in the country, disenfranchising the Islamic Gulas of the north.

Séléka rebels, led by Michel Djotodia, and buttressed by Chadian and Sudanese fighters, also Gulas, swept the capital in March 0f 2013, forcing Bozizé to flee to Cameroon. Djotodia, 64, seized power of the largely lawless, fractious republic, declaring that his Séléka fighters had been disbanded as he attempted to assimilate them into the army, unsuccessfully.

What followed was a glut of violent attacks by both members of the Séléka factions and the anti-Balaka (anti-Machete) civilian militias, as well as vigilante Muslim and Christian mobs, with bloodshed concentrated in Bangui.

Paris responded by deploying over 1,000 troops to its former colony.

(Featured photo credit: AP/Eric Feferberg)