Winds of Change in Francophone Africa

This year makes 50 since France granted independence to its African colonies. On the whole, the moment external pagehas inspired little fanfarecall_made, perhaps because there is precious little to celebrate. If you were born in an African country, and the country you were born in happens to have once been a French colony, you are significantly less likely than your counterparts in anglophone Africa to reach your first birthday. If you do, you are less likely to go to school or learn how to read, and the country you live in is, on average, poorer and less democratic. The Internet revolution, shallow though it still may be, is being absorbed by your anglophone brothers at an exponentially faster rate, who also enjoy both higher initial stocks as well as well as faster expansion rates of telecommunications infrastructure like fixed telephone lines and mobile phones, as well as physical infrastructure like roads, electricity and rail.

Fifty years after independence, in just about every measure of human well-being and progress, there is clear evidence for a 'francophone effect.' Less clear is why.

The long shadow of françafrique

For one, there is a strong sense that true independence remains elusive.

In July 2007, just two months after taking office, French President Nicolas Sarkozy stood before an auditorium of students at the University of Dakar. It was a chance for a fresh start, an opportunity to turn the page on nearly three hundred years of colonization and humiliation, not to mention the more recent legacy of françafrique, France's toxic political and economic ties with the dictators ruling many of its former colonies. He chose not to take it.

Instead, he promised to speak plainly, as one does with a close friend. He told themnot all the French came to exploit. The colonizer took, but "he also gave." He built bridges and roads. He tamed the wild. He "made virgin soil fertile."

"Colonization," Sarkozy explained, "is not responsible for all the current difficulties of Africa. It is not responsible for the bloody wars between Africans, for the genocides, for the dictators, the fanaticism." What's really holding Africa back is its "absence" from history.

"The African peasant only knows the eternal renewal of time, rhythmed by the endless repetition of the same gestures and the same words. In this imaginary world where everything starts over and over again, there is no place for human adventure or for the idea of progress."

Sarkozy, seemingly intent on resurrecting the worst of colonial-era stereotypes of Africans, provoked an outrage in France and across the continent. Critics decried his speech as "racist." If anything, it was telling of the extent to which France, in its relations with Africa, remains peculiarly frozen in the past. His explicit denial of France's role in promoting corruption or violence was an odd denial of reality.

The basic calculus of French policy since Charles de Gaulle has been to support somewhat questionable leaders in exchange for natural resource concessions, turning a blind eye to bad behavior and protecting friends from domestic opposition. The external pageElf Gabon casecall_made is illustrative of the extent of the corruption at the heart of this contract. In 2004, thirty top officials at Elf Gabon (a subsidiary of French oil company Elf Aquitaine, now Total) were convicted in relation to the embezzlement of hundreds of millions of dollars of funds for personal use in the Mitterrand years. The journalist Nicholas Shaxson, in his book external pagePoisoned Wellscall_made, describes the case as just the tip of the "dirty iceberg." Elf has been an important intelligence arm of the French government in Africa, and magistrates close to the case claimed to have uncovered evidence of Elf money being used for as diverse purposes as bribing African politicians, funding French political parties, and funneling cash to armed rebel movements.

France's willingness to protect its allies and support the francophone block has lead to several questionable interventions in its former colonies. By way of example, there's France's role as the exclusive arms dealer to Biafran forces during the Nigerian Civil War, or its suppression of an armed uprising in 2002 in Cote d'Ivoire. Most notable, perhaps, were external pageits actionscall_madeexternal pagein Rwandacall_made, where France trained and armed the Hutu militia, continuing to back Hutu extremists well into the genocide, some say because officials were concerned about the advance of anglophone influence - the regime's Tutsi opponents were English speakers.

Beyond the Dakar speech, Sarkozy's actions suggest he is doing little to dismantle françafrique. In his first days in office, Sarkozy made a point of external pagereaffirming close tiescall_madewith Denis Sassou-Nguesso, President of Congo-Brazzaville for 30 years, and Omar Bongo, President of Gabon for more than four decades until his death last year. (He was replaced by his son.) Meanwhile, a external pagehigh-profile lawsuitcall_made brought by Transparency International against Sassou-Nguesso, Bongo and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea in a Paris court alleged that each had embezzled millions of dollars in public revenue for their personal use, including the purchase of dozens of luxury apartments in Paris. (It was ultimately thrown out of court) In Gabon, a garrison of French troops still protects the president's mansion.

The colonial legacy

It's impossible to quantify the impact of France's postcolonial legacy in Africa. There are some who would even argue that French interventionism, its support of dictators, has lent a measure of stability to an otherwise turbulent region. Moreover, it's possible that the 'francophone effect' has its roots in an even earlier history. After all, the former French colonies at independence started, on average, at a lower level of economic and social development than their anglophone counterparts.

One explanation may lie in the way that the French and English set up their colonial administrations, which formed the basis for the political systems of independent states. The English relied on a system of 'indirect rule', which tended to incorporate, where possible, indigenous political systems. Military affairs and tax collection were left up to the British, while most other areas of life were under 'native' administration. In reality, chiefs were invented where they could not be found, and the British could rule the unruly in just as unitary a fashion as the French, but were, on the whole, more likely to leave important features of local politics intact.

French rule, by contrast, was based on assimilation, with a system of 'direct rule' that undermined and often supplanted local institutions. The result was that at independence, French colonies were left with an institutional structure that concentrated power at the center, at the expense of local administrative structures that can play an important role in supporting democracy and checking the power of the executive.

But perhaps the most fundamental difference between British and French rule comes down to money. From 1880 until just before World War II, the French invested 10 times less public capital and 20 times less private capital in their African colonies than the British. Sarkozy was right, the French did built roads, but the British built more of them.

The new frontier of investment

Earlier this month, France hosted the Africa-France summit in Nice. For the first time, the French government broke with tradition, external pageinviting several hundred French and African businessmencall_madeto what has always been a cozy gathering of African heads of state and top officials in French government and state-owned business.

The move is no doubt a response to the changing winds. For one, the dialogue around development in Africa, at least external pagein anglophone circlescall_made, is increasingly pro-business and pro-investment, with many pinning hopes for Africa's future on an expanded role for the private sector.

Also clear is that external pageChina's arrival on the scene has changed everythingcall_made. African leaders are increasingly seeing it as in their interest to cultivate relationships with multiple foreign partners. Competition for natural resources is heating up, with renewed interest from the US and newcomers like India and Brazil also increasingly throwing their hat into the ring. Add to that the privatization of French oil in 2000, and the result is a landscape where it has become increasingly difficult for France to take hegemonic control over any of its former African colonies as a given.

Sarkozy said that in Africa, "there is no place for human adventure or for the idea of progress" on a continent that has supposedly found itself on the fringe of history. Africa once again finds itself at the center of history. France's relationship to Africa will change, not because France wants it to, but because the balance of the world is changing. France will have to adapt or risk missing out.