{"id":4011,"date":"2026-06-04T12:59:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/?p=4011"},"modified":"2026-07-14T11:15:30","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T11:15:30","slug":"francafrique-frances-ongoing-and-blatant-exploitation-of-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/2026\/discover-history\/francafrique-frances-ongoing-and-blatant-exploitation-of-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Fran\u00e7afrique: Time to End France’s Ongoing and Blatant Exploitation of Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A picture is worth a thousand words: French colonial officer sits in a hammock hanging on humans as the supporting frames. (Image: Wikimedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

France’s relationship with its former African colonies is not merely history. It is an active, documented system of economic and political control that has persisted for over 60 years after formal independence. It even has a name: Fran\u00e7afrique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The CFA Franc: A Colonial Currency Still Running<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

More than six decades after formal independence, fourteen African nations still use a currency conceived during colonial rule, managed under foreign constraints, and anchored to European financial power. The CFA franc was created in 1945 by the French government as an administrative instrument to manage colonial economies in service of Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mechanics are stark: France backed up currency regimes in Central and West Africa (while co-locating half of these regimes’ currency reserves in Paris) a requirement removed for West Africa in 2019 but still in force for Central Africa. In practical terms, African governments had to park their own foreign exchange reserves inside the French Treasury for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Francophone countries in West Africa rank among the 40 least developed countries in the world, while neighbouring Anglophone countries do not. This is a reality that has strengthened arguments that Fran\u00e7afrique is a neo-colonial system that preserved French economic and strategic interests while constraining sovereignty and limiting structural transformation in African states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Uranium: Powering France While Impoverishing Niger<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps no single example illustrates French exploitation more sharply than Niger’s uranium. Uranium was purchased from Niger at unfairly low prices compared to market value, despite powering a significant portion of France’s electricity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Niger’s uranium province at Arlit has produced more than 140,000 tonnes of uranium since the late 1960s, representing the operational heart of Franco-Nigerien nuclear cooperation for over half a century. Yet Niger, which supplied fuel for French nuclear power plants generating cheap electricity for French homes and industry, remained one of the world’s poorest countries throughout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Niger is now fighting back. In 2024, Niger removed Orano’s operational control of its three main uranium mines: Somair, Cominak and Imouraren, which holds one of the largest uranium deposits in the world. And in 2025, Niger’s government accused Orano of “irresponsible, illegal, and unfair behavior,” stating that between 1971 and 2024 it had taken over 86% of Somair’s uranium disproportionately higher than its 63% stake, leaving Niger’s state-owned company as a minority stakeholder in its own resource.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Military Presence as Political Control<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

France maintained a network of military bases across its former colonies that served less as security partnerships and more as instruments of political leverage (protecting friendly regimes and removing unfriendly ones. In just five years, French forces on the continent went from 10,000 soldiers to 2,000) not a strategy change, but a retreat driven by rising African pushback. The main cause was French troops being expelled from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger between 2021 and 2024, led by military governments motivated by strong anti-French sentiment and a growing call for African freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chad terminated its defense cooperation agreement with France on November 28, 2024, saying it aimed to “assert its full sovereignty and redefine its strategic partnerships according to national priorities,” calling the agreement “obsolete” and lacking “real added value.” Senegal, Ivory Coast, and others followed. The withdrawal marked a fundamental shift in Franco-African relations, with several analysts stating it represented the decline of Fran\u00e7afrique, France’s sphere of military, economic, and geopolitical influence over its former colonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowhere has that retreat gone further, or faster, than in the Sahel itself. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger have not simply expelled French troops. They have restructured their entire foreign policy around that rupture. Together, the three states formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a mutual-defense and political confederation built explicitly to replace what ECOWAS and Paris once provided. Under leaders like Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, the AES states have gone as far as formally severing diplomatic relations with France, expelling remaining diplomats alongside the troops, and accusing Paris outright of neo-colonialism and of sustaining “subversive networks” in the region. In their place, all three governments have pivoted toward Russia and China for security cooperation and political backing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The break is not only military and diplomatic. It is economic and cultural too. The AES bloc has moved to tighten mining codes and nationalize multinational operations, aiming to keep gold and uranium wealth, and its processing, on African soil rather than exporting it raw, echoing the same grievances driving Niger’s uranium dispute with Orano. At the same time, the three states have pursued a deliberate cultural break with the colonial past: replacing French with indigenous languages in parts of government business and banning colonial-era court attire in their institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. The Hypocrisy Exposed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The irony is not lost on Africans. In June 2025, Macron himself framed Russian involvement as “neocolonialism”, saying it “secures your position as leader, then takes your mines, takes your information system, and puts the country under lockdown.” The irony of a French president accusing Russia of neocolonialism was not lost on African commentators. France’s own record with African mines, military installations, and political manipulation is well-documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where This Leaves Africa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The momentum is clearly shifting. The military expulsions, the uranium nationalisations, the CFA franc debate, and the AES’s wholesale rejection of the Fran\u00e7afrique model together create a historic convergence; one where the Sahel’s break with Paris is not an isolated incident but the sharpest expression of a continent-wide reckoning. The question is whether African states can turn this political and moral momentum into lasting structural change, replacing exploitative arrangements not just with new foreign patrons, but with genuinely sovereign, Africa-led economic frameworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sahel’s moves are bold, but replacing France with Russia and China is not sovereignty. It is swapping one dependency for another. The harder, more important work is building the institutions, the intra-African trade, and the financial systems that make external dependency unnecessary in the first place. Until that work is done, even the most decisive ruptures with Paris risk becoming, in the end, just a change of masters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

France’s relationship with its former African colonies is not merely history. It is an active, documented system of economic and political control that has persisted for over 60 years after formal independence. It even has a name: Fran\u00e7afrique. 1. The CFA Franc: A Colonial Currency Still Running More than six decades after formal independence, fourteen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[127,571,1287,1286,1289,1285,65,846,1288],"class_list":["post-4011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discover-history","tag-africa","tag-bank","tag-colonies","tag-control","tag-currency","tag-francafrique","tag-france","tag-independence","tag-loans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4011"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4186,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions\/4186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feelnubia.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}