The French Empire was one of the most powerful in human history.
At its height, it controlled almost ten percent of the world’s land area.
From Southeast Asia to West Africa, the country we today associate with baguettes and cinema
was a dominant global power.
And that was particularly true in Africa.
France oversaw territory spanning 17 modern-day nations, from Morocco to the Congo.
Under the banner of a “civilizing mission,” France oversaw brutal occupations that engorged
the wealth of the Empire, and left a terrible legacy for ordinary Africans – marked by
slavery, extraction, and murder.
And today, France’s empire in Africa is STILL around – in a streamlined, more profitable,
and even more exploitative form.
Let me explain.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a wave of decolonial movements sweeping
across Africa and Asia.
And the French – humiliated by their defeat and occupation at the hands of the Nazis – were
eager to maintain their empire.
So they responded to revolts in Algeria, Indochina, and Madagascar with brutal reprisals.
Maintaining foreign holdings became increasingly difficult.
By 1960, France was forced to grant independence to almost all its colonies.
But something really important happened in Africa.
Basically, the leadership of France decided to keep their empire in Western and Central
Africa intact in everything but name.
The plan was simple.
When an African country gained its independence, it was made to sign a so-called “cooperation
agreement” with France, which would outline the nature of their relations moving forward.
In exchange for French foreign aid, African countries were required to give France rights
over natural resources, allow France to maintain troops in their territory indefinitely, and
– most importantly – keep these countries’ currencies linked to France’s currency,
the franc.
Instead of having their own currencies, they were to use the “Franc of the Financial
Community of Africa” – what is now called the “CFA franc.”
The French framed these “cooperation agreements” as a choice, but they were also clear about
the consequences of defiance.
When the leader of Guinea, a socialist named Sékou Touré, rejected the cooperation agreement
with France – and declared that he preferred to be “poor in freedom than rich in slavery”
– the French government decided to make an example of him.
They cut all foreign aid to Guinea, and did everything they could to destabilize the government.
They launched a secret campaign to print fake Guinean banknotes and flood the country with
them.
One French spy later bragged: “The operation was a total success: Guinea’s economy, already
very weak, never fully recovered.”
The French said that these countries existed within the so-called “French Community.”
But the policy would come to be known more widely as “Françafrique.”
It was about having the former colonies in a position that was maximally advantageous
to French interests.
Many of the first generation of postcolonial leaders in former French colonies had essentially
been installed by the French.
They spoke French, had spent time in France, and were well-integrated with French elites.
Jacques Foccart, a French diplomat, oversaw French relations with Africa for almost thirty
years, and built a huge web of client relationships with African leaders, using corruption and
covert operations to make them loyal subordinates.
When local political orders were threatened, the French weren’t afraid to protect their
hand-picked dictators: since 1960, France has invaded Africa more than fifty times.
Look at the Central African country of Gabon as one example.
Gabon is particularly important to France, because it has a huge supply of oil and an
even bigger supply of uranium.
Among the African colonies, Gabon was historically one of the very closest to France.
In 1967, a man named Omar Bongo became Gabon’s president, soon turning the country into a
one-party dictatorship.
And Bongo was intimate with France.
He had been appointed after flying to Paris for what was basically a job interview with
the President.
So, under Bongo, France and Gabon enjoyed a relationship that benefited both sets of
elites.
Gabon’s oil was pumped by the French state-owned oil company Elf, and its uranium went right
into France’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
In return, France subsidized Gabon’s budget, especially the parts that flowed into the
pockets of Omar Bongo and his family.
At one point, Bongo was worth over one hundred and thirty million dollars.
Gabon, meanwhile, remained poor and underdeveloped.
Under Bongo, it had one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.
Instead of investing in the Gabonese economy, Bongo spent state funds on influencing French
politics in his favor, bankrolling the campaigns of several future French presidents.
Even today, France keeps troops in the country to support Gabon’s current ruler, who happens
to be Omar Bongo’s son.
And Gabon is actually one of the happier stories.
Other countries, like the Central African Republic, are today some of the poorest in
the world – in part due to the legacies of French-backed dictators like Jean-Bédel
Bokassa.
But there’s another aspect of French influence that’s even more important.
Probably the most central part of all is the CFA franc – the last colonial currency still
in widespread use.
In practice, the countries that use the CFA franc have virtually no monetary sovereignty:
the value of their currency is linked to the Euro.
The poorest countries in the world have a currency controlled by the richest countries.
And so the imperatives of European countries – fiscal discipline and fighting inflation
– end up shaping the very different world of Western and Central Africa.
That leads to an overly tight approach to credit, something that’s necessary in our
current system for an economy to grow.
It means that any appreciation in the Euro makes exports from these countries less price-competitive.
So just look at what happened in Senegal.
When the Euro appreciated against the dollar from 2000 to 2009, the value of the CFA franc
got higher.
But this made local Senegalese rice more expensive than imported rice from Thailand.
So Senegal – which was trying to build its own domestic rice industry – instead saw
Thai rice wipe out local rice farmers.
So because domestic products are expensive, this makes export-driven growth nearly impossible
which is necessary to lead a country out of poverty.
That’s why most countries that use the CFA franc have growth rates significantly lower
than their neighbors.
Because the CFA discourages the development of domestic industry, many of these economies
have actually been shrinking.
The Ivory Coast, the largest CFA franc country, has a real GDP per capita one-third lower
than it had in 1978.
Other CFA franc countries like Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo reached their highest
levels of real GDP per capita in the seventies and eighties.
And because economic growth is weaker, there is more incentive for local elites in these
countries – always tied closely to French multinationals – to take as much money out
as possible.
Billions of dollars have flooded out of these countries and into shell corporations or foreign
bank accounts.
Through massive corruption, these African elites have joined the ranks of the global
super-rich.
In 2007, for example, Omar Bongo’s daughter-in-law appeared on VH1 to buy an LA mansion for 25
million dollars.
And elites in France get a great deal too.
They enjoy cheap access to natural resources and kickbacks from shady business deals.
A French billionaire named Vincent Bolloré now owns most of the major ports across West
Africa.
In France, Bolloré is known as the quote “King of Africa.”
So French colonialism in Africa has never really ended.
This is why academics use the term “neocolonialism”: even as the branding of “empire” has faded
away, the structures of economic extraction have only grown stronger.
This “neocolonialism” is actually a much more efficient form of exploitation than the
colonialism of the past.
The French no longer pretend to care about building functional governments or improving
local living standards.
It’s pure extraction, all the time.
So these African countries are not under-developed: they are over-EXPLOITED.
France is almost totally reliant on its influence in Africa for its economic power.
In the words of Italy’s foreign minister, “If France didn’t have its African colonies,
because that’s what they should be called, it would be the fifteenth largest world economy.
Instead it’s among the first, exactly because of what it is doing in Africa.”
And the French know this.
François Mitterand – former president of France – said it himself: “Without Africa,”
he declared, “France will have no history in the twenty-first century.”
Today, of course, France faces competition from China within Africa, and new challenges
to the colonial symbolism of the CFA franc.
There are plans to change the currency’s name and abandon the most overt symbols of
the colonial past, to make it look like the system is more African than French.
But France has no intention of actually abandoning a system of extraction that has made it one
of the richest nations on earth.
The real question is whether the next generation of Africans will allow it to continue.
I’m Ismael Loutfi, for the Gravel Institute.