France: Making a comeback in Africa?
Blogged by: Nina Brenjo
Last week, French troops helped the Central African Republic (CAR) government to suppress a rebellion, but this is not the only country on the continent where the French have troops. What's France up to in Africa?
As Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports, France is also supporting Chad's President Idriss Deby in his efforts to quell an uprising in the east of the country. French troops are also in war-divided Ivory Coast and France has led the military part of European Union efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The French justify their intervention in CAR and Chad with the fact that the conflict from nearby Darfur could spill into these countries as well, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).
But is that really all France is up to?
No, says Uganda's daily, New Vision. The paper believes that the recent accusations that France threw at Rwandan President Paul Kagame are just "part of a grand plan for France's comeback in Africa".
France, whose empire was the second largest after Britain's in the 19th and 20th centuries, controlled large swathes of northern, western and central Africa by the end of the 1800s.
The current dispute with Rwanda flared up after one of France's top judges, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, recommended Kagame be tried for the 1994 assassination of former President Juvenal Habyarimana. The shooting down of Habyarimana's plane was widely seen as triggering the genocide. Kagame says Hutu commanders backed by France shot down the plane.
The takeover of Burkina Faso by a charismatic leader Thomas Sankara in the 1980s and the ousting of the Chadian dictator Hissen Habre in the early 1990s, both former French colonies, was the beginning of the end of French influence on the continent, New Vision explains.
Then came Rwanda and the government France could do business with was ousted by the rebel forces led by Kagame.
The current deployment of French troops from Chad to Ivory Coast is proof France is making a comeback on the continent, warns the paper. In fact, AFP quotes the French defence ministry spokesman saying that the deployments in Chad and CAR are "a precise political strategy" by French President Jacques Chirac.
Rwanda's accusations that France aided the genocide in 1994 could lead to a case at the International Court of Justice - something France would obviously like to avoid. French counter-accusations are really just a way to stop Rwanda acting as "a stumbling block in the grand Franco-African comeback", the paper concludes.
Is France vying to become a major player in Africa again? If so, it's not the only country trying to court the continent.
Chinese businesses are piling in and Beijing is providing large loans and aid packages.
Unlike France, however, China's policy to date seems to be invest, but don't get involved and don't ask questions.
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