France Prepares To Go Home

By Dr. Gary K. Busch 18/4/05

Culled from Oncus.net (Apr 26, 2005, 11:03)

One of the most significant developments of the early twenty-first century is the steep decline of French influence in Africa. For centuries the French have exercised a degree of power and influence over a broad spectrum of African states, in West and Central Africa, which has left it as the most important colonial and neo-colonial power on the continent. French corporations and banks have long-standing positions of dominance in African economies; the currencies and reserves of most francophone countries are controlled by the French Exchequer through a pattern of dependence and a common currency; French transport and communication companies control access to the African nations; and the French military have bases across Africa ready to intervene in domestic and regional African conflicts.

This is all changing and changing quickly, reflecting the wider loss of
French power and influence in world affairs. There are several reasons
for this decline. One of the most salient factors in French decline is
the French lack of a reliable source of energy. France relies on
nuclear power for a large portion of its energy production; the rest is
supplied by imported oil and gas from abroad. France (and the French
companies) has to compete in the world market with the giants of the petroleum
industry (EXXON, SHELL-BP, CHEVRON-TEXACO, etc.) for access to the
supplies of crude oil. They do not have the resources to compete in this
league so make do with establishing a presence in countries which carry
political risks for the majors. That is why they are in Burma, Sudan
and why they were among the earliest to break sanctions on Libya. In
other nations they used corrupt payments to political leaders, as in
‘Angolagate’, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon, Iraq to name but a few,
to retain a commercial dominance. In the last few years, however, as
the focus of U.S. energy policies has concentrated on diversifying
Middle Eastern supply dependence to West African suppliers, the French have
found themselves outgunned and outspent by the U.S. majors. The new oil
developments in traditional French strongholds like Chad, Mauritania,
Ivory Coast and Mali have been largely U.S.-led. The French presence in
Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome is almost non-existent (despite French
sponsored dissidence and coup attempts). France doesn’t have the
resources to match the expansion in this area..

Moreover, the French dependency on nuclear power has created a
terrorist nightmare for the French police and army. France moves large
quantities of nuclear fuels, spent fuel rods and waste on trains throughout
France. Indeed, they even take in German nuclear excess. It is very
difficult to maintain security of such movements over such a long distance
and these nuclear fuel loads are a ripe target for terrorists. With a
large and unruly domestic Muslim population, a substantial portion of whom
have identified themselves with extremist political views, this
dependence on nuclear energy has made France reliant on support from the
international community for anti-terrorist information and co-operation.
This has limited France’s ability to offend its allies without risking
serious consequences.

By far the most important element in the decline of the French in
Africa is the concomitant rise of the Chinese and their overwhelming hunger
for raw materials. It is a little ironic that the Chinese are now
becoming the saviours of Africa, when it was the Chinese who condemned
Africa to a long period of ‘benign neglect’ and decline. Up until the
admission of ‘Red China’ into the United Nations, the ‘Afro-Asian Bloc’ would
meet with the West before each General Assembly vote and negotiate
economic and political concessions in return for their support of the West
in the annual vote on the admission of the People’s Republic of China
to the UN. The moment that China was voted into the U.N, there was no
reason to appease Africa or buy its votes. The Korry Report in the U.S.
was indicative of the policy – choose nine countries with which to work
and ignore the others. Africa entered a period of neglect and
marginalisation, save for the struggle in South Africa and the discovery of
large
deposits of oil in Gabon, Nigeria and Angola.

Now, the Chinese are everywhere in Africa. Over the past six years
China has made a determined effort to strengthen its trading, military and
political ties with a broad range of African nations. Forty African
countries have trade agreements with China. Current Chinese projects
include a railway project in Nigeria; a Sheraton hotel in Algeria; a mobile
telephone network in Tunisia; refurbished hotels in Sierra Leone;
hotels, supermarkets and boat construction in Liberia; aircraft production
in Egypt; and oil drilling and production in Sudan. Despite a slow
start in the 1990s, China's trade with the African continent reached $18.5
billion in 2003, an increase of 50 percent since 2000. The trade in
2004 was about 7% higher than that of 2003, or almost $20 billion.

In December 2003 Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attended a China-Africa
conference in Addis Ababa and announced that China had cancelled the debts
owed to it by 31 African countries; debts totalling $1.27 billion. He
also promised that China would open its markets to exports from the 34
least developed African countries on a preferential, duty-free basis.
Following his visit, in February 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao
visited Africa to emphasise the Chinese desire for closer ties. This visit
was followed by the visit of Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who
signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the Southern African Customs
Union (SACU). South Africa now has become China's largest trading partner
in Africa and bilateral trade has increased from 1.47 billion US
dollars in 1990 to over 3.7 billion dollars in 2003. Two-way trade in the
first quarter of 2004 totalled $1.67 billion dollars, an increase of 66.6
percent from the same period in 2003.

The Chinese expansion of its influence in Africa is due, primarily, to
China’s voracious appetite for raw materials. Its commodity imports
cost $140 billion last year, and its trade deficit on them was $100
billion. China’s industries, especially the oil industry, are sucking up the
world’s supplies of commodities and creating shortages and raising
prices. The impact of China's raw material and food demand on global trade
has been so dramatic that shipping rates have quadrupled during the
past 18 months.

Although China needs Africa for its supplies of food and raw materials,
trade with Africa is a two-way street. China produces large quantities
of goods (clothing, white goods, electronics, mobile phones,
agricultural equipment, transport machinery, inter alia) which are in high demand
in African markets at a reasonable price. China is also a low-cost
supplier of pharmaceuticals and immunisation drugs needed in Africa which
often bypass Western patent protection and its associated costs.

Chinese expansion has been concentrated, thus far, largely in
Anglophone Africa, but inroads are being made throughout Francophone Africa.
Chinese trade missions are spreading throughout West and Central Africa
offering opportunities for these nations to break their dependencies on
France. The direction of trade is no longer via Europe. Transport to the
US and the Far East, in terms of tankers, containers and breakbulk
carriers are bypassing Europe as an unnecessary diversion and cost. Air
routes with the Far East are the dominant destinations in African air
cargo operations. Europe, especially France, is becoming marginalised in
this growth and its influence is declining with it.

Another reason for the decline in French influence is the increasing
regionalisation of military relations in the support of stability. The
ECOMOG has a long and distinguished record of intervention in Liberia and
Sierra Leone. The Africa Union has recently deployed soldiers to
Darfur. The French presence as peacekeepers in the Ivory Coast or the
Democratic Republic of the Congo is an anachronism. Their record of their
failure in Rwanda, the Ivory Coast and the DRC is an object lesson in
military incompetence. Most African states recognise that ex-colonial states
have no business in peacekeeping. The trend is for specialist Private
Military Companies (PMCs) to take on the role of trainers, suppliers of
logistics and communications in peacekeeping efforts by multilateral
Africa Union forces. In this, France is extraneous.

France’s strength in Africa has always been its ability to project
itself as the fount of culture; the yardstick of propriety. French colonial
success was primarily in the minds of the colonised. This, too, is
passing. In the time of the internet, when young Africans read world news;
where they have access to unfiltered information flows (including the
blunders of the French in Rwanda and the Ivory Coast); where the ability
to read English is a sign of modernity and the ability to retrieve
information from the web, the French days of cultural dominance are over.
It will go back to being just another country in Europe, like Belgium or
Luxembourg and the new horizons of the Far East and North America will
beckon the current generation of Africa.

Source: Ocnus.net 2004

Comments

[Stephen Joseph]

I'm afraid this title reads too optimistic, if not naive: "France Prepares to Go Home." The French have carte blanche from the other permanent four of the Security Council to plunder Africa and incite and sponsor genocide. France will not go home without a perpertual and determined battle by Africans and Africans alone to force them out. Mamadou Koulibaly, the Speaker of the Ivorian Assembly is in the forefront of this battle with the recent publication of his book, "Les Servitudes du Pacte Colonial," that describes the evil schemes of the solely French-crafted 'Cooperation Agreements' which have seen French-speaking Africans become the most politically repressed and economically dispossed linguistic group and peoples on the face of the planet. A peoples who have known nothing but genocide (La Republique du Cameroun, Rwanda, Congo-Brazzaville), tyranny and olympic corruption to foster French interests. Get Mr. Koulibaly's book and let all Africans intensify the battle of the destruction of France's nazi enterprise in Africa once and for all.