By Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan Anthropologist
By choosing, in response to the coups, to punish the populations of the Sahel – in particular by drastically cutting all humanitarian and development aid – President Macron is targeting the wrong target and playing into the hands of the military in power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. He thus adds to the resentment towards France in African public opinion and perpetuates a disastrous diplomatic policy. One of the most frequently put forward (and indeed very plausible) reasons for Macky Sall’s very surprising decision to postpone the presidential elections in Senegal is the low expected score of his candidate (and incumbent prime minister) Amadou Ba.
Maybe France had its share, another mistake! The dramatic welcoming of the Senegalese prime minister by Elisabeth Borne in Paris last December must in fact be attributed to the numerous counterproductive gaffes that characterize Emmanuel Macron’s African policy. Showing French support for a presidential candidate in an African country is probably the best way to immediately bring down his popularity. Lionel Zinsou knows something about this: his closeness to Macron discredited him during the presidential elections in Benin in 2016.
But there’s more. It is Emmanuel Macron’s entire African policy that is inconsistent and calamitous. One of his most recent and serious failures was undoubtedly that of having decided to “punish” the authors of the coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger by “punishing” the people of these countries. This position is reminiscent of that of De Gaulle towards Guinea when, under the impetus of Sékou Touré, he answered predominantly “no” to the 1958 referendum on joining the “French Community” and chose immediate independence. Furious and offended by this defeat, De Gaulle immediately put an end to the French presence in Guinea, causing a brutal economic crisis, pushing the country into the arms of the USSR and thus contributing to the rise of the long paranoid dictatorship of Sékou Touré. This harmful decision was largely responsible for the latter’s popularity among African publics.
Furthermore, the personal and purely emotional character of De Gaulle’s reaction appears retrospectively even more vain and counterproductive, considering that the famous “community” was a complete failure that lasted no more than two years, a period after which all the African countries that had having answered “yes” they in turn chose independence, now accepted without a word by France. All this for this! And now Macron is repeating the same mistake! If he seems tempted every day to adopt more and more a Gaullist position, when it comes to Africa he follows De Gaulle in one of the worst decisions he ever made: the scorched earth strategy out of spite.
By cutting off any humanitarian or development aid, any form of cooperation or partnership for the three Sahel countries, both for national and international NGOs and for public services, research and culture; closing the three French consulates and refusing to issue visas to citizens of these countries; effectively making it impossible for doctoral students, artists, researchers or economic operators from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to travel to France for studies, conferences, exhibitions, concerts or business; and, yesterday, the icing on the very bitter cake, by closing the French school in Niamey (the Lafontaine course, of which half the students were Nigerian), the French President not only targets the wrong target by directly penalizing the populations of the Sahel, but also plays against its own camp because it plays into the hands of the military in power who target France as their main objective and increasingly attract their public opinions with each brutal measure of France and with each arrogant declaration of its president.
All these errors are even more inappropriate since, for a long time, mistrust, resentment and a sense of humiliation have been widely spread feelings towards the former colonizer (for many legitimate reasons mixed with some more questionable ones).
Macron also plays against his own camp by mortgaging, with his words and decisions, the short and medium term future of any French cultural, development or humanitarian presence in the Sahel, and his political mistakes will contribute to the foreseeable decline of the French language which the military in power undoubtedly has it in their agenda. He provides golden confirmation to the statements of all those, numerous in the Sahel and in Africa, who denounce the persistence of the colonial or neocolonial behavior of the French authorities, their hypocrisy and their lack of real interest in the populations. It destroys the precious and fragile capital of trust that (sometimes? often?) could have been gradually built over the years between on the one hand the professionals of the Agence française de développement, the professionals of the French cultural centers or the professionals of the French NGOs and on the other, their Malian, Burkinabé or Nigerian partners.
All the boxes of what shouldn’t have been done have been ticked
Emmanuel Macron’s succession of errors regarding Africa in general and the Sahelian crisis in particular is impressive. For two or three encouraging statements to be put in the “positive” column (a mention of colonialism as a crime against humanity, the decision to return stolen works of art, the creation of memorial commissions on the Algerian war, the little role glory of France in Rwanda and the repression against the UPC in Cameroon), the “negative” column is more than full to the brim: public and shameful schoolboy joke towards President Kaboré in Ouagadougou, imperial and arrogant summoning of the leaders of African State in Pau, insulting injunction to them not to participate in the so-called “France-Africa summit” in Montpellier, relative acceptance of the first coup d’état (the most important) by Assimi Goïta in Mali before making a 180 degree turn of faced with a half-coup by the same colonel shortly afterwards (the dismissal of ministers deemed close to France was considered unacceptable by the latter), tolerance and absence of sanctions for the authors of the coups in Chad, Guinea and Gabon despite loudly denouncing their counterparts in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, equally loud and inappropriate support for the strong ECOWAS sanctions against Mali and Niger which has done nothing but reinforce the military’s accusations that ECOWAS is being manipulated by France (which which is not true, at least as far as Nigeria, the dominant power of ECOWAS is concerned), even louder and even more inappropriate support for ECOWAS’s threats of military intervention against Niger (which have been bread and butter for the regimes in power in the Sahel , allowing them to mobilize their populations against a possible aggression by France), refusal of any diplomatic use and any common sense that its ambassador in Niger declared persona non grata leaves the country forcing him to remain barricaded in his embassy under popular insults …
Surely, no one in the president’s entourage warned him? What seems certain, in any case, is that he listened to no one on the matter except his courtiers. The not very credible presidential council on Africa has been absent for a long time. NGOs (despite sometimes being celebrated by the Elysée) have of course protested publicly, but Jupiter doesn’t care at all when he is angry. Among the AFD staff, the French executives of international organizations, the professional diplomats, the vast majority deplores (that’s a euphemism) this avalanche of serious errors. Bound by their duty of confidentiality, they were unable to express themselves publicly. But in any case their expertise was never requested. It is not the president’s custom to stoop to listen to experts close to the ground.
In this unlikely succession of absurd and harmful declarations and decisions, one cannot even read any coherent policy: everything seems to fall within Giupiterian revenge and whims (we know that the Olympians changed the course of human history out of simple jealousies, whims or ego disputes). But the use of collective punishment of the peoples of the Sahel is even more serious. How dare you promote an image of France as a land of freedom, equality and fraternity or as wishing to establish a fair partnership with African countries when you target, out of simple spite or spite, the poor populations benefiting from French aid, dozens of thousands of jobs generated by French-funded NGOs, thousands of intellectuals who came regularly or exceptionally to France for exchanges, training and partnerships, to students of French educational institutions in Bamako, Ouagadougou or Niamey?
The current scorched earth strategy in the Sahel is therefore catastrophic on three levels: on the one hand the local populations are the first victims, on the other it gives meat to the mill of Francophobia of the military regimes, and finally it seriously compromises future relations between France and the three Sahelian countries.
Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan Anthropologist, emeritus researcher at the CNRS and director of studies at the EHESS
