The doors of the French Embassy in Burkina Faso have been closed since the September 30 coup – the second in nine months; the consulate and all the French services have also drawn the curtain, pending security work. Overnight, the map of “Faso” turned blood red on the site of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to the recommendations of the State, only Ouagadougou, the capital, remains frequentable.
In the “land of honest men”, land of the revolutionary Thomas Sankara, France is now a target. All it took was one sentence, uttered on television by the red berets, to light the fuse. Facing the camera, on September 30, the putschists claim that the overthrown president “took refuge within the French base in Kamboinsin in order to plan a counter-offensive”. The information was immediately denied by the French authorities. Too late. Dozens of demonstrators take to the streets shouting “Down with France!” ; the embassy is attacked with Molotov cocktails, the visa service of the consulate burnt down, two cultural centers ransacked… And French nationals asked by the Elysée to stay at home for several days.
After Mali, the epicenter of anti-French sentiment in recent months, anger is being expressed more and more openly in French-speaking Africa. In May, the fever reached Chad, where protesters rose up against Paris’ support for the military junta in power. In Senegal, exasperation is displayed in capital letters on the walls of Dakar: “FRANCE DÉGAGE!”. There, the events of March 2021 caused an electric shock. On the sidelines of demonstrations against the arrest of opponent Ousmane Sonko, 24 Total stations were ransacked, Auchan stores looted, Orange kiosks burned.
The Russians pick up the bet
Sixty years after independence, the awakening is painful for France, which sees prospering in its former “backyard” a hostility to which it is struggling to respond. And for good reason, the government sees only one culprit: the “disinformation” led drum beating by its adversaries, Russia in the lead, in full reconquest of the continent for fifteen years. The method, now known, consists of a regular pounding of France on social networks, the work of an army of trolls financed by the Russian oligarch Evgueni Prigojine, the boss of Wagner’s mercenaries, present in the Central African Republic and in Mali.
Russian propaganda is based on a nebula of associations and local media and on a few “pan-Africanist” activists, like Nathalie Yamb, a Swiss-Cameroonian activist nicknamed the “Lady of Sochi” for her boundless loyalty to the Kremlin. It is finally relayed by opportunist politicians, cantors of a new anti-French populism which seduces. Witness the dithyrambic welcome given to the Prime Minister of Mali on his return from New York after his speech to the United Nations General Assembly, accusing France of complicity with terrorists. Virtually unknown on the Malian political scene a few months ago, Colonel Abdoulaye Maïga had his moment of glory on September 27, escorted by a jubilant crowd from the airport to Boulevard de l’Indépendance in Bamako.
In this war of stories, France reacted late. The General Staff of the Armed Forces set up this summer a cell dedicated to the fight against “informational attacks”, intended to detect and make public these maneuvers. But it will take more to turn the tide. Because if Russian intox find such an echo in Africa, it is because they are surfing on real grievances against the former colonizer. “If France sat at the table of the winners in 1945, it owes it in particular to the landing in Provence, in which there were more Mamadou and Abdel (African skirmishers) than Michel, recalls a former officer , a fine connoisseur of the continent. Their descendants demand more recognition. When they struggle to obtain a visa, inevitably, it arouses resentment…” To these frustrations is added the rejection of a French military presence with mixed results in the Sahel and misunderstanding of Paris’ dubious alliances with authoritarian regimes.
thirst for sovereignty
“Talking about ‘anti-French sentiment’ is a euphemism that hides the real questions, Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe told us a few months ago, who has accompanied Emmanuel Macron since 2021 to think about the ‘refoundation’ of the Africa-France relationship. More only a feeling, it is a well-argued opposition to the forms of military or economic intervention of France in Africa. To lose sight of this political dimension or to drown it behind emotions is a mistake.” His analysis has obviously not yet convinced the top of the state. “There is no anti-French feeling, rather the discourse of a noisy minority instrumentalized by foreign powers”, hammered recently a high-ranking source at the Quai d’Orsay.
Behind the scenes, those most familiar with the field are no longer veiling their faces. The “Quai” crisis center organizes meetings to alert the economic actors present in West Africa. “We are asked to remain vigilant, to keep a low profile and to try to be local-local, testifies one of them, met in Paris. All the French boxes are worried.” A large employer in Burkina Faso said on condition of anonymity: “One morning, about thirty individuals landed with their Kalashnikovs in one of our factories in the east of the country (where jihadist groups are raging) and asked directly if the company was French. Our instructions are clear: we systematically say that we are a Burkinabe company. Moreover, the majority of our employees are locals.”
“Africanizing executive and managerial positions in French companies has become a major objective”, confirms Etienne Giros, president of the French Council of Investors in Africa. But the road is still long. “We still see aberrant situations, plagues a French boss who has been living in Senegal for twenty years. Here, no one understands why 100% of the capital of the company which manages the new TER belongs to the SNCF! Similarly, the fact that the Sen’Eau, in charge of the distribution of drinking water and 45% owned by Suez, or led by a Frenchwoman parachuted by the headquarters does not pass at all. Everywhere, the desire for sovereignty is surfacing, revived by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which have revealed the continent’s dependencies and justify, in the eyes of a majority of African leaders, not to “align”. on a field.
At the podium of the Dakar Forum on Peace and Security, on October 24, the French Secretary of State for Development, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, reiterated, with a clenched fist, her call for “solidarity” from Africa on the Ukrainian file. A message coldly received by the assembly. This year, neither the Minister of Foreign Affairs nor that of the Armies made the trip for this event sponsored by France to the tune of 700,000 euros. Paris is shrinking, hoping to be less open to criticism. On the military side, the staff has only one word to say: “discretion” about the redeployment of the Barkhane force, driven out of Mali by the ruling junta. The Elysée wants to prevent other countries from cutting ties in turn. “France is forced to observe a form of strategic patience and to accept that it can no longer dictate the tempo,” notes Ibrahim Maïga, Malian researcher at the International Crisis Group. From Dakar to Bamako, a little music rises: the “true decolonization” has begun.