French military presence in Africa faces drastic decline Report reveals

An article published by Algerian Echorouk online describes the weakening influence of France in Africa, Caliber.Az reprints the article with some changes.

A confidential report by Jean-Marie Bockel, the personal envoy of French President Emmanuel Macron to Africa, revealed shocking information about the fate of French influence in the African continent. The report was prepared last November and submitted to the French president. Still, it was not declassified due to the sensitivity of its information, which indicates a frightening decline in France’s military presence on the continent.

The France International website (France Inter) published the details of this exciting report, which revealed that the French military presence in the African continent is heading towards extinction in a short time and that it is no longer present except in two countries in West Africa, namely Gabon and Ivory Coast, after this presence extended from West Africa to its centre, passing through the Sahel region, which ended its relationship with its former colony, France, at a time when relations between Algeria and Paris are going through one of their darkest stages. The report indicates that both the Republics of Chad and Senegal asked Paris to withdraw its soldiers from their countries in 2024, which was only a few days away and considered a severe blow to French influence in the African continent. 

The Senegalese transformation is due to the results of the presidential elections held this year, which brought a political elite that is not friendly to France. Before it was Chad and Senegal’s turn, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso were the first to end the French presence in the region, in a separation incident between them and the former colony, which, according to remarks of senior officials in Mali, showed that its army, which was present on Malian territory under the pretext of fighting terrorism in the region, was protecting terrorist dens and breeding them to destabilize the region. 

In a meeting in the fall of 2001 in the Malian capital Bamako, which included the foreign ministers of the Sahel region and was attended by the former Algerian Foreign Minister, Ramtane Lamamra, the latter addressed France without naming it: “They need to free themselves from certain positions, certain behaviours and certain visions, which are fundamentally linked to the inconsistent logic of the alleged civilizational mission of the West, which was the ideological cover used to try to pass off the crime against humanity represented by the colonization of Algeria, Mali and many African peoples.” 

This meeting was followed by the beginning of an organized rebellion against French interests in the region. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger soon joined the bandwagon after military regimes took control of the governments there. According to the report, there is no military presence left on the African continent after Chad and Senegal, except for Gabon and Ivory Coast. 

The new philosophy has found its way to embodiment, namely that these military bases will be placed entirely under the authority of the host countries, and thus there will be no large base or large unit, but only temporary joint liaison detachments, comprising about a hundred soldiers. Accordingly, the report explained, Djibouti in the east of the African continent (Horn of Africa) will be the last French military stronghold on the African continent, oriented towards the Indian and Pacific Oceans. 

Djibouti is also the only deep-water port in the region, where France permanently deploys 1,500 men, serving, in particular, a naval base and an air base, governed by a very specific defence agreement.