Françafrique Continuity
Coups, garrisons, and managed independence
French influence in its former African colonies survived formal independence through military bases, currency control, and covert political management. Paris repeatedly backed friendly rulers and undercut inconvenient ones.
Damage
Postcolonial French networks preserved coercive and financial levers across Francophone Africa.
Value lost
Continued resource and contract asymmetry under informal empire
Record Points
- Cooperation accords at independence kept French garrisons and monetary control in place across the region.
- French forces intervened dozens of times to prop up or remove African governments after 1960.
- Networks around figures such as Jacques Foccart ran off-book political and financial channels.
- Oil and uranium contracts, notably for Areva in Niger, secured strategic resources on favorable terms.
- A wave of expulsions of French troops from the Sahel after 2020 marked the visible fraying of the system.
Perpetrator(s)
Victims
Francophone Africa