Is France proud of its footprints in colonial Africa? (1)

DIPLOMATIC DRAMA UNFOLDED in Paris, the French capital, two months ago at the October 2024 Francophone Summit hosted by President Emmanuel Macron. An embarrassing moment came when DR Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi walked out of the summit. It was a bold expression of discontent by President Tshisekedi against Macron’s handling of an issue of great concern to Tshisekedi. That was not the first time Tshisekedi publicly reacted to Macron. The first time was in March 2023, also on stage, while having a joint address with the visiting Macron in Kinshasa. Tshisekedi has twice done what a francophone African leader would not have dared some 30 or 40 years ago without dire consequences from France. 

In March 2023, Tshisekedi upbraided the visiting Macron, telling him that “you must begin to respect us and see Africa in a different way. You have to stop treating us and talking to us in a particular tone, as if you are always absolutely right and we are not.” He was not the first African leader to openly embarrass Macron on stage. In November 2017, during a speech by President Macron in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, a visibly offended President Roch Marc Kabore walked off the stage in response to a joke made by Macron. “You speak to me as if I were the president of Burkina, but I do not want to deal with electricity….” Macron said. Although he said Kabore “left to repair the AC,” he dismissed as ridiculous any suggestion that he had offended President Kabore on the controversial air-conditioning quip. 

In a world where geopolitical alliances are constantly shifting, the walkout, either by Tshisekedi or by Kabore is indicative of a turning point in the political dynamics between DR Congo or Burkina Faso on one hand and France on the other. If Macron had played down the exchange with Kabore as a non-issue, at least then, subsequent events leading up to strained relationship between France and the military leadership that succeeded Kabore are worth the attention. For Tshisekedi in particular, the Paris episode was a pointer to deepening rifts between Kigali and Kinshasa as well as between Kinshasa and Paris. Tshisekedi’s actions in Paris and Kinshasa are bold expressions of frustration and impatience of Africa with colonial masters. In particular, the Paris summit — attended by Rwanda’s Paul Kagame — must have been construed as validating Rwanda’s role in the lingering war in DR Congo. In a desperate move by France to woo back Rwanda — demonstrated in the 2021 state visit to Kigali by Macron — it may have unwittingly sent the wrong message to the hurting DR Congo. 

Tshisekedi’s protest and his boycott of the summit’s heads of state retreat followed President Macron’s opening speech that skipped any mention of the war in eastern Congo. Such an omission was construed as an attempt by Paris to appease Kigali that the DR Congo accused of supporting M23 rebels. Even during Macron’s visit to Kinshasa in 2023, the purported French support for Rwanda stoked anti-French sentiments in the eastern DR Congo. The M23 rebellion — one of the largest and most prominent among many armed groups operating in the eastern DR Congo region — have taken over the control of much of the country’s eastern region since 2012. Peace talks by regional leaders and calls for a cease-fire in the troubled areas and for the M23 rebels to withdraw from the territory they are holding did not seem to have moved the needle. Understandably, the intractable armed groups’ presence, lasting over decades, is all about control of the eastern region’s vast mineral resources.

Macron’s seemingly tardy response and poor handling of the crisis has apparently displeased Tshisekedi and may have triggered a harsh response from him, as it seems like Macron was trying to please Kigali and turned a blind eye to the suffering of the people in eastern DRC.

What Tshisekedi has done in recent times in response to France could well be a culmination of the rallying cries of some leaders from francophone countries on other issues bordering on discontent against France, with the cries becoming more strident. In recent times, it appears as if the economic bond between France and its francophone former colonies is snapping. The colonies are now actively reacting to the realisation that colonialism may have officially ended many decades ago, but its shadow still lingers over them. Reference to the so-called “colonial tax” is breeding some sort of rumpus as the colonial tax is a system involving some former French African colonies who send a portion of their income to France. The fact that this arrangement, established during colonial times,  continues till now, is upsetting the leaders of more and more francophone countries.

It is of great significance that they now openly challenge the perpetuation of a system that allows France to control and claim as much as 85 percent of the annual earnings of its former colonies. They are now seeing the need to break free from any obligation to deposit their foreign currency reserves into France’s central bank. It is obvious that France has been prospering off the back of its former colonies all these years of purported independence. The restrictions placed on their access to their own money kept with France are drawing the ire and fury of more francophone African leaders as they can only withdraw up to 20 of their own money at a time, often as loans; and power of approval or denial still resides with France. In West Africa — Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo — still pay the colonial tax. Interestingly, opposition to the continued use of CFA common currency in Africa’s francophone countries is gathering momentum both in France and in Africa.

In November of 2019, Benin’s President Patrice Talon in a rather unsparing comment, said the Francophone nations in West Africa want to take more control over their CFA franc currency and plan to move some of their reserves away from France. In that interview on Radio France Internationale, Talon reportedly said, “psychologically, with regards to the vision of sovereignty and managing your own money, it’s not good that this model continues.” President Talon announced that all eight member countries of the West African CFA union are planning to pull out of it. If Talon’s statements were interpreted as one that shook the establishment table in French-African relations in 2019, the CFA and many other hitherto restricted social and political issues are now freely discussed and the no-go areas are now being questioned openly. In particular, issues on the France-backed CFA franc are now more commonly discussed officially and unofficially, even among grassroots activists and opposition political leaders.

In 2015, President Idriss Déby Itno of Chad called for a restructuring of the CFA currency to “enable African countries which are still using it to develop.” He said he considered the CFA as “pulling African economies down,” and that “time has come to cut the cord that prevents Africa from developing.” But, in a desperate effort to numb the frayed nerves of those complaining and lull them into docility, France in 2019 chose to work through its puppet ally, Alassane Ouattara of Côte d’Ivoire, to hurriedly position the ECO currency idea, which would have effectively supplanted the ECOWAS currency that has been in the works since 2000. His own argument, at variance with many other leaders is understandable. After all, he needed France backing to legitimise his third term tenure bid. Disappointingly, President Alassane Ouattara, an economist, had argued that CFA zone countries are better off than Anglophone countries due to growth and low inflation, whereas the poor are disproportionately affected by unpredictable inflation in Anglophone countries. The efforts failed and WAEMU’s CFA could not succeed in replacing the ECOWAS planned ECO.

Resistance against continued use of CFA currency is not only brewing in Africa. Opposition is also mounting right inside France as rightwing politicians make immigration and racial identity the core of their message. Marine Le Pen, a French far-right politician, is now a lawmaker with a nativist, inward-looking vision of France, portraying African immigration as an existential threat and depicts Francophone Africa as an economic and cultural deadweight that France should discontinue relations with. While running for President in 2017, Le Pen famously used the CFA Franc as a campaign issue during a visit to Chad in which she promised that, if elected, she would ensure that the currency is abolished and Francophone African countries are given “greater sovereignty” to relate with France on their own terms. It looks like sooner than later, if doing so will succeed in controlling African immigration from a position of detachment, a majority of French voters may actually prefer to get rid of the CFA altogether.

While more and more Africans are clamouring and advocating loudly, demanding an end to the influence of France on their territories and certain groups of people within France also sing the same chorus, is it not time for soul searching among the French politicians? Looking back and considering contemporary events, France should be able to determine if it is proud of its colonial legacy in Africa.

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