US disappointment, French leader's failures in Africa

French leader's failures in Africa have been described in The Wall Street Journal.

An excerpt from an article by The Wall Street Journal about French President Emmanuel Macron’s failures in Africa has been published on the website of Africa’s Mondafrique news agency, Caliber.Az reports.

The French are not the only Westerners in Sahel, Africa. The US also maintains troops there to fight jihad and conducts ongoing diplomatic activity in the region. Moreover, the US has rejected the disintegration of the Franco-African relations since 2017.

The US has transferred African policy to France since the 1960s because the convergence of its interests convinced it to allow the former colonial power to "take care" of the region. However, the US has been disappointed since 2017 to see that upheaval occurred in Africa due to President Macron.

US disappointment

The main US mission in the region is military one. “The coup has undermined the US efforts to combat a jihadist insurgency in West Africa that has killed some 41,000 people since 2017. Over the past decade, Washington has spent hundreds of millions of dollars arming and training local armies to fight the insurgency. Today, these commanders are forging security ties with Russia. As for Mali, they are hiring people from the Wagner Group,” the newspaper reports.

Then coups d'etat against French puppets became more frequent in Sahel, namely, the overthrow of President Keita in Mali, then in Burkina Faso, and finally the overthrow of the regime in Niger - the main US ally in this region, where they stationed the biggest number of troops.

This latest coup forced the Americans to reduce their troops by almost a half and also reduce drone activity from their base in Agadez city in Niger. The Americans are reportedly in talks to deploy drones in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Benin in an attempt to stop the spread of jihadists.

There is still fear. West Africa may become a haven from which Islamist terrorist groups can attack the West. Taking this into account, the US convinced President Macron not to reduce the number of French troops in the region.

President Macron's mistakes

The Wall Street Journal mentioned President Macron’s all failures in African politics.

He turned Operation Barkhane (the operation of the French armed forces in Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger against Islamist terrorist groups) from a successful initiative (in particular, the liberation of Timbuktu city in Mali) into a diplomatic disaster due to errors in command and communication, failures in information warfare and promises that were impossible to fulfill or that the French government had no intention of fulfilling.

“Macron administration's efforts to counter disinformation have often been clumsy. He delivers a speech that makes young people believe that he is going to get rid of African dictators. And then he doesn't do anything. This weakens France's position and shows extreme arrogance towards African heads of state. President Macron continues digging himself into a hole,” the article says.