The news comes to shrink a little more the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF), struck by a wave of departures. In a new act of rupture with the former French colonizer, Mali, a country with 3.7 million Francophones led by a junta, announced Tuesday, March 18, its withdrawal from the OIF. The day before, its Nigerian and Burkinabé neighbors had already announced their departure from this organization now counting 90 members, which is responsible for promoting the “French language and cultural and linguistic diversity”, “Peace, democracy and human rights”, or “to support education”.
OIF suspension after putschs
Why is La Francophonie suddenly deserted? “Mali cannot remain a member of an organization with incompatible actions with the constitutional principles based on state sovereignty” explained in a letter the Malian Foreign Ministry. Like Niger and Burkina Faso, allies of Bamako within the Alliance of the States of the Sahel (AES), the country is one of the first members of the OIF, created in Niamey in 1970.
The three countries, led by military regimes that broke up with the former French ally in the name of sovereignism, had been suspended from the OIF following putschs. Mali had been suspended in August 2020, after a military coup which overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, headed since 2013 of this Sahelian country plunged for years in a security, political and economic crisis. The OIF had then called for the release of President Keïta, “as well as the implementation, as soon as possible, of a transitional government led by a civil authority”. After having broken with France and more generally with its European allies, Mali had gradually operated on a military and political rapprochement to Moscow.
Ditto for Niger, which had been suspended from the organization a few months after the coup who had overthrew in July 2023 the president elected Mohamed Bazoum. The OIF then demanded a rapid return to the constitutional order and the release of Mohamed Bazoum, kidnapped since the blow with his wife in the presidential palace. Burkina Faso had been suspended in January 2022, following a military coup which had overthrown the democratically elected government.
Erase the traces of the French colonizer
For the member countries of the AES, which have expressed themselves in a joint press release, the OIF “instead of supporting these countries in the achievement of the legitimate objectives of their peoples, was distinguished by the selective application of sanctions on the basis of geopolitical considerations and contempt for their sovereignty”. She has thus become “a remote -controlled political instrument”, says the text.
In recent years, Mali, but also Niger and Burkina Faso have started to rename streets and monuments evoking figures and places of the ancient French colonial power. In Niamey, the Place de la Francophonie was notably renamed “Place de l’Alliance des States du Sahel”. In Mali, where French was since independence the only official language, the latter was demoted to the rank of “working language” in 2023 (as is already the case with its two neighbors), the multiple traditional languages spoken in the country becoming all official languages.
The trio of countries had also withdrawn in January 2024 from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an organization deemed subservient to France. The Francophonie considers “perhaps being a collateral damage to a geopolitical situation which exceeds it”, as she had declared from the start of Niger.