N’DJAMENA: President Emmanuel Macron Tuesday faced accusations from France’s remaining allies in West Africa of showing contempt towards Africans and from the left at home of neo-colonialism after lamenting that African countries “forgot to say thank you” for France’s decade-long military deployment to fight an Islamist insurgency.

France has been on the back foot in its former colonial territory of the Sahel region of francophone West Africa after military coups in Mali in 2020, followed by a second putsch in 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Niger in 2023 forced the withdrawal of French troops.

As Russia stepped up its influence in all three countries, Paris retained warmer relations with Senegal and Chad but now both of those countries have announced that French troops should leave.

France, under then president Francois Hollande, in 2013 began a military operation in Mali and the Sahel region to fight an Islamist insurgency. Fifty-eight French troops lost their lives in the operation, which was first known as Serval and then Barkhane.

“I think that they forgot to say ‘thank you’. It does not matter, it will come with time,” Macron said in a speech to French ambassadors on Monday.

“We did the right thing,” he said of the military deployment, adding that “none” of the states of the Sahel region would be “sovereign” today without that intervention.

“We left because there were coups d’etat, because we were there at the request of sovereign states that had asked France to come,” Macron added. “France no longer had a place there because we are not the assistants of putschists.” Macron also said that it was France that had itself suggested that a reorganisation of its presence was needed in the African countries. “As we are very polite, we let them make the announcement first,” he said.

‘Learn to respect Africans’

Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno accused Macron of being “in the wrong era”, saying he wanted “to express my outrage” on remarks “which border on contempt for Africa and Africans”.

At the end of November, Chad, which hosted Paris’s last military bases in the Sahel, ended the defence and security agreements that linked it with the former colonial power, saying they were “obsolete”.

Around a thousand French military personnel were stationed in the country and are in the process of being withdrawn. The Chad leader added that the decision to end the military cooperation agreement with France was “entirely a sovereign decision of Chad. There is no ambiguity in this.” Chad’s acting foreign minister Abderaman Koulamallah earlier said that the remarks showed a “contemptuous attitude towards Africa and Africans,” adding that French leaders “had to learn to respect Africans”.

Koulamallah noted the “key role” played by Africa and Chad in the liberation of France during World War I and II, which “France has never truly recognised”.

Senegal Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko meanwhile lashed out at Macron for suggesting African countries needed to show gratitude towards France.

“France has neither the capacity nor the legitimacy to ensure Africa’s security and sovereignty. On the contrary, it has often contributed to destabilising certain African countries such as Libya with disastrous consequences for the stability and security of the Sahel,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2025