By early 2025, France finds itself unceremoniously ejected from over 70% of the African nations where its troops once strutted with impunity. What remains of its military presence is a ghostly echo—1,500 soldiers in Djibouti, 350 in Gabon. The grand retreat is nearly complete.
France, that most stubborn of colonial lingerers, has at last seen the big door shut in its face. The once-mighty overseer of Françafrique has stumbled out of West Africa and the Sahel, its final withdrawal from Ivory Coast marking the gravestone of an empire’s last military illusions. The exodus, which began in earnest in 2022, is no mere strategic recalibration—it is the funeral procession of France’s old stranglehold, a geopolitical requiem for a waning force.
It started with Mali. August 2020. A military coup, defiant coup leaders, and the swift eviction of French troops. By December 2023, Operation Barkhane, France’s ill-fated counterinsurgency, had dissolved into history. Burkina Faso followed suit in 2022, and by the end of 2023, Niger had likewise sent its former patron packing.
Then came Chad. In a move that blindsided Paris, N’Djamena abruptly severed military ties in December 2024, demanding 1,000 French troops depart by the end of January 2025. Even Senegal, long France’s loyal foothold in West Africa, turned the page—its young, radical-leaning President Bassirou Diomaye Faye declared in December 2024 that all foreign military bases, France’s included, would be gone by year’s end.
A shrewd politician who reads the room, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, once France’s stalwart ally, announced the closure of its last major base. By February 20, 2025, the French military officially handed over its Port-Bouët stronghold to Ivorian authorities, now rechristened Camp Thomas d’Aquin Ouattara. A mere 80 French advisors linger, a dwindling relic of past dominance.
The Last Gendarme Falls
At its peak, France’s African empire boasted thousands of troops, patrolling the Sahel under the pretext of combating Islamist insurgencies. Now, the gendarme of Africa has been unceremoniously dismissed. What remains of its military presence? A fragile Paris-based Command for Africa, a desperate bid to maintain relevance through “strategic partnerships” rather than permanent bases.
Yet the truth is inescapable: Françafrique is not merely in decline—it is gasping its last breaths.
This imperial ghost was born in the 1960s, cloaked in economic entanglements, and military installations that kept African sovereignty under the French boot. From uranium mines to oil wells, France’s presence was always more about extraction than security. But Africa has tired of the charade. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, military leaders have ridden a wave of anti-French sentiment to thwart France’s attempts to reassert its dominance. Even in relatively stable Ivory Coast and Senegal, leaders have found national pride incompatible with French paternalism.
Ouattara’s decision to reassess relations – despite his historic closeness to Paris – marks the definitive turning point. He played it diplomatically, framing the withdrawal as military independence rather than outright rejection. But the message is clear: France is no longer the master of its former dominions.
Russia, China, and the New Courtiers of Africa
As the French exit, others step in. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have turned to Russia, swapping one foreign benefactor for another in their search for security. Ivory Coast has so far resisted this pivot, but the regional tide is unmistakable—France’s monopoly on military influence is shattered.
Beyond Russia, China, India, and Turkey court Africa with infrastructure and economic promises, pragmatic alternatives to France’s antiquated security obsession. The continent, once shackled by colonial ties, now negotiates from a position of choice.
France’s dwindling military footprint means its capacity to dictate African affairs has shrunk. True, its cultural and economic ties persist—over 200 French companies still operate across the continent—but the military backbone of Françafrique is crumbling.
The CFA Franc: France’s Last Colonial Grip
Yet France still clings to one remaining lever of control—the CFA franc, a monetary relic binding 14 African nations to the French Treasury. Through the CFA franc, France has dictated monetary policy, tying West and Central African economies to the euro at an immutable exchange rate of 1 EUR = 655.957 CFA francs.
This economic tether, first imposed under colonial rule, ensures that African nations continue depositing their reserves with France, trading sovereignty for supposed financial stability. Even after 2019 reforms freed WAEMU countries from this obligation, Central Africa’s economies remain ensnared.
While supporters tout the CFA’s low inflation and stability, critics decry it as economic servitude—a straitjacket preventing currency devaluation and insulating African economies from tailoring policy to their own realities. The resentment is tangible, sparking debates from Bamako to Dakar. In 2024, newly elected Senegalese President Faye vowed to scrap the CFA franc by 2030, while Mali openly flirts with a gold-backed currency in discussions with Russia.
The French Paradox: A Colonial Specter Haunting the Homeland
The tragedy of France’s African misadventures is not merely in its failure, after over a century, to control the continent, but in its utter incompetence at reading the room. It has overstayed, yes—but more damningly, it has miscalculated, blundering its way through coup after coup, betting on the wrong horses time and again.
In the past, the French military got directly involved in backing factions in its former colonies during coups or conflicts.
France conducted multiple interventions in Chad, starting with Operation Limousin in 1968 to support the government of François Tombalbaye against rebel groups. Later operations, such as Operation Tacaud (1978) and Operation Manta (1983), aimed to bolster the regime of Hissène Habré against Libyan-backed forces and other factions.
During the Shaba I and Shaba II (1977-1978) invasions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, France intervened alongside Belgium to support the corrupt and repressive President Mobutu Sese Seko against Katangan rebels based in Angola.
In 1979, France launched Operation Barracuda to oust Emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa and restore David Dacko to power after a military coup and growing instability.
Throughout the Rwanda War (1990-1994), France strongly backed the Juvenal Habyarimana government and provided it with training and weapons against the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army. France viewed Habyarimana’s Rwanda as part of its “Françafrique” sphere of influence in Africa.
When the genocide against the Tutsi started, France launched Operation Amaryllis (8-14 April 1994) to evacuate French nationals and other expatriates from Rwanda. During this operation, French forces also evacuated members of Habyarimana’s family and key Hutu government figures, including Agathe Habyarimana, the president’s widow, who was later implicated in supporting the genocidal regime. France worked directly with the extremist Hutu Interahamwe militia, blamed for killing most of the nearly one million Tutsi and opposition Hutu who perished during the slaughter. In Rwanda, France proved spectacularly incompetent at picking winners and has been hobbled by its mistakes since.
Compare this with the British. Their military has had a long presence in Kenya, marred by accusations of abuse and exploitation of local women. Yet they have navigated the politics with a level of discretion that France seems incapable of mustering. Britain backs the wider political class and establishment, not factions. It avoids overt interference, preferring the subtle knife over the blunt club.
And here lies France’s final irony—its colonial policy of aggressive assimilation has birthed greater rejection. Unlike the British, who never seriously attempted to make their subjects “British,” France sought to turn Africans into Frenchmen and women. The resistance has been robust.
The Reckoning in the Banlieues
Now, the ghosts of empire haunt France itself. The banlieues—those neglected suburbs with their Arab-Muslim populations—seethe with discontent. In places like Marseille’s quartiers nord, police tread lightly, wary of armed gangs. The same French state that sought dominion over Africa now finds itself ceding ground in its own cities.
Algeria, the most bitter of France’s colonial scars, looms large in this reckoning. The 1968 Franco-Algerian Agreement, once a pillar of Franco-Maghrebi relations, now hangs by a thread as France grapples with immigration tensions and radical clerics it cannot control.
Here, history delivers its cruelest twist: the empire that sought to remake Africa in its image now finds itself transformed by those it once ruled. France, having wielded its colonial whip with abandon, now faces a reckoning in its own streets, its own politics, its own uneasy soul.
The buffoon of Africa, once laughing in dominion, now stares at the mirror of its own making. And Africa? Africa is no longer listening.
