France's President Emmanuel Macron gestures as he delivers a speech during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on January 20, 2026. The central question, ultimately, is no longer whether France can regain its old grip. It is whether Africa will allow the old relationship to return, writes Savious Kwinika.
Image: Ludovic Marin / AFP
Why does France want to retain or regain influence across Africa even as a growing number of former colonies challenge its military presence, political influence and economic arrangements?
According to two prominent Pan-African voices interviewed exclusively by CAJ News Africa, the answer lies in the enormous strategic, economic and geopolitical value of Africa — from its mineral wealth and markets to its military positioning and political influence — which France accumulated during colonial rule and subsequently sought to preserve through post-independence relationships.
The question has become increasingly pertinent following the expulsion of French forces from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, the formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), and Senegal's decision to end France's permanent military presence.
The three AES countries have also strengthened relations with Russia while seeking greater control over their resources and economic affairs.
For Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Pan-African analyst, educator and human-rights activist Jean Bwasa, France's determination to preserve influence must be understood against the historical relationship between the former colonial power and its African possessions.
“The relevance of France and all other imperial nations that invaded Africa for a supposedly assistance, would like to regain its influence to continue looting the Third World,” Bwasa told CAJ News Africa.
His argument is that the struggle is not principally about French troops. It is about access to resources, political leverage, strategic positioning and economic systems that, in his view, enabled France to exercise disproportionate influence long after its former colonies became independent.
Bwasa places the CFA franc at the centre of that argument.
The CFA franc monetary arrangements have their roots in French colonial rule and remain among the most enduring institutional links between France and parts of West and Central Africa.
Today, the CFA franc refers to two separate currencies used in West and Central African monetary unions, with monetary policy administered by African central banks but with a formal monetary-cooperation framework involving France.
“France being number one of that list imposed the currency CFA where French dispossessed ECOWAS and AES nations from its resources,” Bwasa said, referring to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Alliance of Sahel States.
He argues that the arrangement helped France maintain a position of political, economic and strategic superiority.
For the AES governments, the question of monetary sovereignty has consequently become part of a much broader campaign to break with structures associated with the colonial past.
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have not formally introduced a replacement currency, but their leaders have discussed greater monetary sovereignty and the possibility of creating a common currency.
Bwasa sees the transformation in wider economic terms.
“AES nations have stopped that hegemony,” he argued.
“They prefer processing their resources and harvest them.”
That demand for domestic processing is significant.
The argument advanced by the Sahel governments is that exporting raw minerals and commodities while importing finished products leaves African economies disproportionately dependent on external powers.
Processing resources locally, they contend, can create employment, industrial capacity and greater national wealth.
Bwasa believes the three countries have therefore become an example for the rest of Africa.
“France has tried but Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso — the country of the upright men — are in a class of their own,” he said.
Human-rights lawyer and renowned Pan-African political activist Advocate Gabriel Shumba agrees that France has substantial interests in Africa, although he approaches the issue from a strategic rather than purely anti-colonial perspective.
“The Sahel remains strategically important to France,” Shumba told CAJ News Africa.
He identifies intelligence gathering, counter-terrorism operations, rapid military deployment, protection of French nationals and interests, regional trade routes, migration and access to strategic resources such as Niger's uranium among the reasons the region matters to Paris.
Geography is equally important.
The Sahel stretches across the southern edge of the Sahara and links West Africa with North Africa and the Gulf of Guinea.
Instability in the region can therefore have consequences far beyond the countries immediately affected, including implications for migration, terrorism, trade and European security.
For France, losing influence in the Sahel consequently means more than losing military bases.
It reduces its ability to project political and strategic power across a region where it once enjoyed extraordinary influence.
But Shumba stresses that strategic interest cannot become a claim of ownership.
“France cannot simply assume an entitlement to permanent military bases in its former colonies,” he said.
The departure of French troops, however, does not necessarily signify French abandonment of Africa.
“I do not believe France will abandon the Sahel strategically,” Shumba said, “but I equally do not believe that it can realistically reconstruct the old Françafrique order.”
Françafrique, the term associated with France's close post-colonial political, economic and security relationships with its former African colonies, became one of the defining features of France's influence on the continent.
That model is now under unprecedented pressure.
Russia, China, Türkiye, the Gulf states and other powers have expanded their political, economic and security partnerships in Africa.
The AES governments have particularly strengthened relations with Moscow, presenting Russia as an alternative partner to France.
This emerging multipolar environment is one reason the stakes have become higher for Paris.
A loss of influence to African governments seeking genuine strategic autonomy can simultaneously mean a gain for rival international powers.
Yet Shumba cautions African countries against simply exchanging one external patron for another.
“The more important question, therefore, is not whether France will ‘return’, but what kind of relationship France can establish with a new generation of African states that are increasingly asserting strategic autonomy,” he said.
“France must compete for partnerships rather than presume them.”
The confrontation has also strained relations between the AES and ECOWAS.
Following Niger's 2023 military coup, ECOWAS imposed sweeping sanctions, including restrictions on trade and financial transactions. Similar sanctions had previously been imposed on Mali following its military takeover.
Although ECOWAS argued that its measures were intended to defend constitutional government, Shumba believes they inadvertently strengthened the political bond between the three Sahel states.
“Rather than simply compelling the military governments to comply with ECOWAS, they contributed to solidarity between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and strengthened the political logic behind the Alliance of Sahel States,” he said.
“In that respect, sanctions arguably achieved the opposite of regional integration: they helped accelerate regional fragmentation.”
Shumba nevertheless rejects the idea that military coups should automatically be legitimised.
“ECOWAS cannot be condemned merely for seeking to defend constitutional government,” he said.
His concern is instead that broad sanctions can impose enormous costs on ordinary citizens.
“The ordinary people should not be made to carry the punishment intended for governments,” he said.
The political support enjoyed by the AES governments is central to understanding the continuing confrontation.
Although their leaders came to power through coups, supporters have portrayed them as representing popular frustration with insecurity, poverty, unemployment, corruption and what they regard as excessive foreign influence.
The dispute has consequently become larger than the question of military versus civilian government.
At its heart is an increasingly assertive demand that African states determine their own security alliances, economic policies and resource strategies.
Former African Union (AU) Permanent Representative to the United States Dr Arikana Chihombori-Quao has repeatedly criticised France's continuing influence in Francophone Africa, including the legacy of colonial economic arrangements and the CFA franc.
Her criticism echoes a wider Pan-African argument that political independence did not necessarily end the economic structures through which former colonial powers exercised influence.
Professor Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, the prominent Kenyan lawyer and Pan-Africanist, has previously criticised foreign interference in Africa and warned about attempts by external powers to preserve or rebuild influence on the continent.
For Bwasa, the continued contest is ultimately a warning about African disunity.
“Africa remains a dwarf, and if we continue being divided which is policies of the imperialists — we are doomed,” he said.
He argues that Africans who share the historical experiences of slavery, colonialism, land dispossession and exploitation must cultivate greater solidarity through the Pan-African philosophy of Ubuntu.
“If we refuse to work together and nurture social cohesion, peace and stability we are bound to disappear,” Bwasa warned.
“We fall into their trap of ‘Divide to Rule or Conquer’, thus maintaining us into a bondage of poverty and slavery.”
Shumba's prescription is more nuanced, placing equal emphasis on sovereignty, human rights, constitutionalism and African integration.
“Africa becomes weaker when African states isolate one another and stronger when they negotiate their differences while defending both constitutionalism and sovereignty,” he said.
Ultimately, the question of why France wants its African influence back cannot be separated from Africa's strategic importance.
Africa possesses vast mineral resources, critical energy reserves, rapidly growing markets, important trade corridors and a youthful population. Its geographical position also gives it extraordinary strategic significance in global competition.
For France, surrendering influence means surrendering economic opportunities, strategic access and diplomatic leverage accumulated over generations. For African nationalists, however, the same reality presents an opportunity: to transform resource wealth and strategic importance into genuine sovereignty and prosperity.
The Sahel revolt is therefore about far more than the departure of French soldiers.
It is a contest over who controls Africa's resources, who determines its partnerships, who shapes its security policies and whether the continent's political independence can finally be matched by economic sovereignty.
France may seek to regain lost ground because Africa remains too valuable strategically, economically and geopolitically to ignore.
But as Bwasa and Shumba make clear, the emerging African demand is not necessarily for isolation from France or any other external power.
It is for a fundamentally different relationship — one in which Africa engages France, Russia, China, the United States and other powers as a continent of sovereign states, rather than as a collection of former colonies whose strategic importance can be claimed as inherited influence.
The central question, ultimately, is no longer whether France can regain its old grip.
It is whether Africa will allow the old relationship to return.
CAJ News
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