African Leaders Push Back at Macron’s Remarks They Owe Their Sovereignty to France
(Bloomberg) -- African leaders pushed back after French President Emmanuel Macron said that some of their nations owed their sovereignty to France after its troops intervened in their countries.
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France sent its forces to Mali in 2013 to repel an offensive by al-Qaeda-linked insurgents, and later deployed troops to other countries in West Africa’s Sahel region.
“For all the African heads of states, who facing the public opinion didn’t have the courage” to acknowledge the role France played, “none of them would be a sovereign country today if the French army hadn’t deployed in the region,” Macron said in a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps on Monday. “I think someone forgot to say thank you.”
Senegal, which together with Ivory Coast, became the latest former French colonies in West Africa to ask the European nation to remove its troops from bases in their territory, said French interventions had also helped sow instability in the region, citing Libya, with consequences for the Sahel.
“Let me remind you that France has neither the capacity nor the legitimacy to ensure Africa’s sovereignty,” Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said in a Facebook post on Monday.
Chad’s President Mahamat Déby in a statement Tuesday said Macron was “in the wrong era.” Chad, which hosted France’s last military bases in the Sahel, ended its security agreements with Paris in November, saying they were “obsolete”.
France’s contribution to Chad during its long presence there “has often been limited to its own strategic interests, without any real lasting impact for the development of the Chadian people,” the African nation’s Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah said on Monday.
France intervened at least twice in Chad against rebels that threatened to overthrow ex-President Idriss Déby in recent years. It backed the controversial power grab by Déby’s son, Mahamat, after his father’s death in 2021.
France is in the process of reconfiguring its military presence in Africa after being forced to leave Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger after those nations came under military rule.
--With assistance from Samy Adghirni.
(Adds Chad president’s comment in sixth graph)
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