poverty

The official visits to Paris during the first week of July by three African heads of state raised more questions than answers about the Africa policy of François Hollande, the newly-elected French President. On July 2 it was President Alpha Conde of Guinea, on July 5 Ali Bongo, President of Gabon, and on July 6 President Macky Sall of Senegal. Presidents Conde and Sall came to power through elections generally recognized as free and fair, but the 2009 elections that brought Bongo to power, succeeding his late father Omar Bongo, who had served as Gabon’s President for 42 years, were widely thought to have been rigged.

This series of visits came as something of a surprise, François Hollande having promised to put an end to “Françafrique,” the web of political, economic, and military links between France and its former African colonies, links that maintained France’s sphere of influence and allowed it to continue to think of itself as a world power. In the words of former President François Mitterrand, “Without Africa, there will be no history of France in the 21^st century.” Françafrique, though it came to have a negative connotation, had already been official French policy since the founding of the Fifth Republic by Charles de Gaulle. [click to continue…]

Tagged as: affaire Elf, Areva, Ben Ali, Blaise Compaoré, Bolloré, Bongo, Bourgi, Bouygues, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Charles Taylor, Congo, corruption, De Gaulle, Elf Aquitaine, Foccart, francafrique, France, Gabon, Hollande, Issoufou, Le Floch Prigent, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Messieurs Afrique, Mitterand, Monsieur Afrique, Niger, Roland Dumas, Sall, Sarkozy, Sassou Nguesso, Senegal, Tunisia, Villepin

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