Recently in world media covering Africa a lot of information has surfaced about French President Emmanuel Macron’s intentions to reformat Paris’ Africa policy to offset the negative consequences of its numerous failures. This was caused by an unprecedented increase in anti-French sentiment in the francophone countries of the continent and a continuous series of coups that swept the «backyard» of the former metropolis.
Paris’ promises are ‘sinking into the sand’ of the African Sahara
In this case, we are talking about a significant reduction in French military personnel at military bases. This is not the first time France has announced plans to improve relations with African partners on the basis of equality and mutual benefit. However, each time these promises ‘sink into the sand’ of the African Sahara.
It should be noted that Paris has traditionally given priority attention to the development of relations with African countries. Even after they gained independence, France never let them out of its sight, doing its best to counteract their development of active ties with external players. At the time, President Francois Mitterrand noted that «without Africa, France will not have its own history in the 21st century», and even today, Africa, as a source of strategically important mineral resources, plays an important role in the development of the French economy.
To understand the motives of Macron’s new initiative, it is necessary to understand more clearly the reasons that led to the fiasco of France’s Africa policy in recent years. According to many experts, cracks in Paris’ relations with the African continent started to appear following the military intervention of NATO countries in Libya in 2011, the main instigator and organiser of which was French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who tried to boost his low political rating on the eve of the next elections by engaging in a ‘little victorious war’, but was defeated. Next Francois Hollande came to power.
But this event, from which Libya (and not only) cannot recover to this day, led to parts of North and West Africa turning into a zone of unprecedented and rampant jihadism as a result of the defeat of the Libyan Jamahiriya, which shielded the continent from this threat.
Assessing the role of France in overthrowing the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, French news site Le HuffPost in 2015 noted: «Although the 2011 war was conducted correctly from a tactical point of view, it will remain in history as the most serious mistake in the foreign policy of the fifth Republic. Gaddafi was not a very pleasant and rational ruler, but he was not our enemy either…He rejected terrorism and refused to create nuclear........