After more than six decades, French troops completed their withdrawal from Chad this week before a January 31 deadline, the latest blow to France’s shrinking military hold in its former West and Central Africa strongholds.
N’Djamena abruptly cut ties with Paris in December and ended a military pact that saw 1,000 French soldiers stationed in the country. The sprawling nation is a prime spot for monitoring and launching missions against the swarm of armed groups operating in the troubled Sahel region, but also for monitoring activities in neighbouring war-wracked Libya.
That wind-down is part of a recent trend that has seen ex-French colonies cut off or downgrade military and diplomatic ties with their former ruler, due to resentment from perceived French interference in their countries.
In military-led Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, some 4,000 French soldiers have exited, while Russian troops have flooded in to help battle armed groups.
Chad, Senegal and Ivory Coast have since followed suit.
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“For these countries, it’s about sovereignty,” Francophone Africa security analyst Beverly Ochieng with the Control Risks consultancy told Al Jazeera.
“If you have a foreign force in your country, it means you are in some way surrendering sovereignty, and these countries see it as freeing themselves of that interference.”
Popular resentment against France has festered in “La Francafrique” since colonial times but has now erupted. In the last decade, protesters from Abidjan to Niamey have marched in the streets, blaming France for everything from election interference to instability.
However, even as France’s military bases close up, analysts say Paris continues to wield subtle but deep power. From the French language and a common currency among former colonies to phone networks and baguettes, the influence of France is visible and omnipresent in the everyday lives of people across these countries, which could make a total divorce near impossible.
French: ‘Number one language’
France’s biggest soft power lies in the reach of the French language.
Of the 300 million French speakers in the world by 2022, close to 50 percent lived in Africa, according to the Organisation of French-Speaking Countries. There are more French speakers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo than anywhere else besides France, for example.
Across the continent, locals have over time adapted the rule-rigid language to suit their needs. In Cameroon, where French and English are official languages, mixed phrases like tu go où, which means where are you going, are common.
However, across several Francophone countries, official communication, such as public communiques, the news, or even lectures, is delivered in standard French. In Mali, where the military government demoted the French language to a non-official status in August, French is still the working language many months later.
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Recognising the power of the French language, President Emmanuel Macron’s administration in 2018 launched a drive to offer French lessons in most African cities. In a speech to students in Burkina Faso that year, before the two countries fell out, Macron declared that French would be the “number-one language in Africa … and maybe even the world”.
Already, the language is viewed favourably in English-speaking countries like Nigeria where elite schools entice parents with the promise that their children will learn French.
Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who was voted into office in April 2024 on promises of delivering anti-establishment policies and reducing ties with France, has, however, attempted to shake the hold of the language.
His official speeches are delivered in both French and the dominant Wolof language.
Faye has also moved to set up a new agency that will rename streets and squares across the country to honour locals.
France’s centuries-long rule of the country was so encompassing that streets, bridges, and squares were named after colonial officers, or bear French words.
Scholars say such moves are crucial for a country like Senegal that is eager to rebuild an identity independent of France. “It is part of a process of decolonisation that is to contribute to regaining self-respect and healing the trauma of colonialism,” Ferdinand De Jong, a researcher at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, told Al Jazeera.
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CFA: Complicated common currency
Just as strong are the economic ties that have fastened France to its former colonies since before independence.
Mobile network providers, supermarket chain Auchan or nuclear firm Orano are all French-owned businesses that are now part of the business scene in several French-speaking nations. Although these companies have increasingly been targeted in violent anti-French protests, there is no sign that they plan to leave.
Then, there’s the common CFA currency zone. Created in December 1945 at a time when calls for independence were already mounting, the CFA currency zone encompasses 14 West and Central African countries. It was originally known as the “franc of the French colonies of Africa”, betraying France’s original intentions with the currency. Today it is known as the franc of the African Financial Community and is voluntary. Only Guinea-Conakry and Mauritania left the zone upon independence.
Some see the currency as a strong stabiliser against inflation but controversies abound over its terms: Countries must keep 50 percent of their reserves in the French Treasury to keep the currency pegged to France’s euro. Many scholars and African leaders note this limits the CFA’s growth, and in turn, the economies of the countries using it. Others have called it a neo-colonial tool of the French.
In August 2015, former Chadian President Idris Deby, in an independence anniversary speech, called for change: “We must have the courage to say there is a cord preventing development in Africa that must be severed,” Deby said.
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However, no African leaders, including the military ones, have since left the zone.
In Senegal, President Faye promised during his election campaign to ditch the CFA and cease working with Western monetary institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund but has done the opposite.
“They have quietly let the CFA question die down,” Mahmoud Ba, a professor of international relations at Cornell University in New York told Al Jazeera, referring to Faye’s administration. “They have also continued the very close working relationship between the state and the IMF and World Bank, despite the strong criticism they had for these institutions.”
Analysts say countries may fear France’s backlash: After Guinea voted to leave the CFA zone in 1960, the French government launched a secret mission, Operation Persil, to flood the country with the new Guinean franc and engineer hyperinflation. Paris also planned to ship weapons to start a local conflict, although its operation was intercepted.
Leaving the CFA zone and establishing a new local currency, at least in West Africa, is also being complicated by a regional push in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to form a common currency to rival the European Union’s euro. That process has been delayed several times, however, and some blame France for it: In 2019, a day before ECOWAS countries were set to adopt the final terms for the “eco” currency, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara – a staunch French ally – announced that the CFA zone countries were set to adopt a new currency. Its name? Also the “eco”. So far, neither currency has emerged.
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As countries continue to pivot from France, Paris too has begun implementing a new Africa strategy launched in late 2024: There are plans to permanently reduce troop presence in countries that have not yet kicked out French forces, like Gabon, where there are still about 300 French soldiers.
Jean-Marie Bockel, President Macron’s special envoy to Africa, said in May that France wants to “reduce its visible presence, but maintain logistical, human and material access to these countries, while reinforcing our action in response to their aspirations”.
France is also increasingly forming closer relations with former British colonies like Nigeria and Kenya, which do not carry the same hurt and resentment against Paris as their Francophone neighbours. In December, Macron feted Nigerian President Ahmed Tinubu, using pidgin English in his welcome address.
“For France, it’s like a clean slate,” analyst Ochieng said.
