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It’s the economy, Macron!

Paris has lost power in its old chasse gardée but French companies are spreading their wings across the continent

President Emmanuel Macron’s government is wheeling out the ministers of finance, trade and foreign affairs on 19-20 November to meet African businesses and official delegates to cut deals in sectors ranging from green energy, the circular economy and artificial intelligence. It is the latest of the government’s Ambition Africa forums.

The organising team won’t speculate about what deals may be signed during the meeting. But it is intended to send a clear message: France may have been forced into military withdrawal from the central Sahel, and the Macron government is unpopular across West and Central Africa, but its commercial and financial operations remain important to the regions’ economies (AC Vol 65 No 19, President Macron plans military cuts).

And in North Africa, Macron’s trade-off in favour of Morocco against Algeria with his recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara has paid some dividends (AC Vol 65 No 16, Emmanuel Macron’s Saharan mystery). During Macron’s visit to Morocco in October, the two countries signed €10 billion (US$10.7bn) worth of deals with TotalEnergies setting up a green hydrogen plant there and France’s Engie signed deals worth at least €3bn with Morocco’s Groupe OCP (Office chérifien des phosphates).

French companies and development agencies remain embedded in Africa, with a longer reach than any other former colonial powers. Yet this reach is countered by the weight of France’s colonial baggage which it has been trying to shed – at least symbolically (AC Vol 65 No 20, Françafrique’s high priest gives up his secrets).

The first stage reform of the CFA franc single currency, in 2019, retained Paris as the crucial guarantor of the currency’s international exchange rate peg to the euro.

Still, change is underway. Sometimes this is driven more by business considerations than the evolving political climate. In December 2022 the tycoon Vincent Bolloré, who for decades had dominated the West African container ports market, refocused on his Europe-based media interests and sold his logistics group to Swiss-based rival MSC (AC Vol 65 No 13, Bolloré back).

Politics is pressuring French economic interests across the region. This is clearest in the growing demands for replacement of the CFA franc, particularly in the eight-country West African monetary bloc, l'Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine (UEMOA).

The currency is widely condemned by progressive opinionistas as an instrument of French control – despite the 2019 reforms that saw Paris agree to scrap the most onerous conditions underpinning its exchange rate guarantee. In today’s political climate the economic pros and cons of the CFA franc system are sidelined by perceptions of the ‘franc’ currency as a post-colonial hangover and tool of influence.

Bassirou Diomaye Faye, elected in March as Senegal’s president on a tidal wave of popular support, firmly advocates the CFA’s replacement. But he is also an economic realist, a former senior tax inspector who well understands the technical challenges of moving to a new currency (AC Vol 65 No 9, Will Senegal's President Faye lead West Africa out of France's monetary zone?). He publicly emphasises the need to move gradually. In May he visited his Ivorian counterpart Alassane Dramane Ouattara, West Africa’s most senior statesman and seen as the regional authority on the currency question.

Officially, they did not even discuss the CFA franc. But it is widely assumed that the options for a next step currency reform are in fact now under discreet examination. A plausible option would be to revive a plan that was being quietly finalised last year until it was derailed by the July 2023 coup in Niger; this would see the CFA replaced with a new currency but operating in the present euro-pegged system.

The hope is that such a ‘rebaptism’ of the CFA, immediately visible through the change of name and banknotes, would defuse the populist pressure for a rapid break with the old post-colonial arrangement.

It might also take some of the political heat off France which, despite Macron’s 2017 promised support for currency reform, is still accused of exerting control behind the scenes.

With the pressure for urgent change lifted, West African governments and the common central bank in Dakar would have time to develop a longer term strategy for moving to full monetary independence, either as the UEMOA bloc or within the long promised all-The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) single currency.

Currency reform alone would not end resentment of France’s supposed economic influence. More than six decades after independence, the old colonial power is widely accused of taking West Africa’s resources or exerting monopolistic control over numerous business sectors – and even in sectors where its presence has become much reduced.

Few West Africans are aware of the extent to which Moroccan finance groups have replaced French ones as owners of the banks serving their towns and cities.

Nationalist voices often paint the now departed Barkhane anti-terrorist force as Paris’ tool for getting control of the Sahel’s mineral resources.

In fact it is China’s CNPC, Algeria’s Sonatrach and British-based Savannah which have prospected for Saharan oil. France is also largely absent from a gold mining sector dominated by Canadian, Australian, Russian, British and South African companies.

One reason why French business is seen as dominant is its investments in consumer-oriented sectors that are highly visible to the public – such as brewing (Castel) or transport (Air France). And this can make it an easy target at times of unrest.

The French supermarket brand Auchan – which did not arrive in Senegal until 2014, decades after the end of colonialism – was a prime target during the recent years of protest against former president Macky Sall: 39 of its shops were looted, destruction that cost 300 jobs for local people.

TotalEnergies, with 170 petrol stations, leads the Senegalese fuel distribution market. As a consequence many people believe it controls of the country’s newfound hydrocarbons wealth. In fact the key production assets are in other hands – Australia’s Woodwide (Sangomar oilfield) and Britain’s BP and the United States’ Kosmos (Grand Tortue Ahmeyim gas deposit).

The current atmosphere favours politicians seeking to challenge France over its role in the West African economy, such as Senegalese prime minister Ousmane Sonko. And it is also hugely helpful to the Sahelian juntas in their face-off with Paris – as exemplified by the case of Niger’s uranium mining partnership with the French nuclear group Orano. The Niamey junta recently deprived the French group of its most promising concession, the 200,000 tonne Imouraren deposit (AC Vol 65 No 21, Junta’s stance threatens uranium exports).

By contrast, French group Advens Géocoton in the cotton sector in Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Togo has attracted little political attention. This may reflect the low-profile nature of its presence, operating via major local entities such as the Compagnie malienne pour le développement des textiles (CMDT).

The military regimes are well aware that the group has been a vital source of expertise and technical support for a sector that is a major source of cash income for many hundreds of thousands of small farming households. 

Advens Géocoton proudly proclaims that Africa’s economies are vital for the global future but the chilly diplomatic climate hardly helps forward planning. The grim regional security conditions, particularly in Burkina, challenge a sector that is necessarily rooted in the country’s fragile and exposed rural areas. Reports are circulating that a sale of France’s African assets, particularly in Burkina, is under discussion.

Conditions are equally challenging for France’s development programmes, particularly in the Sahel – which had been given special priority in the 2021 framework law for development assistance.

This legislated for a sixth of all French project aid to be allocated to Burkina, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. But of course the Sahelian military coups have in fact dealt a shattering blow to the condition of relations between Paris and Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey.

Yet despite the dramatic deterioration in political relations between France and the central Sahel states since these fell under military putschist rule, the Agence française de développement (AFD) has tried to maintain the flow of support – but without directly paying money to the central governments of Burkina, Mali and Niger, given that these are now under governments that Ecowas and the African Union regard as illegitimate.

The AFD has shut its Niamey office and scaled back its staff presence in Ouagadougou and Bamako, with French national personnel now largely based in Abidjan. It has tried to channel assistance directly to NGOs operating in development in the Sahel states.

But these funding flows could become vulnerable, particularly in Niger and Burkina, where the regimes are tightening up oversight of NGOs. The Burkinabè regime is introducing a tax on NGO revenues – which would thus allow it to capture a share of the support flowing to these organisations from France and other outside partners; and Niger is introducing a scheme for all Non Governmental Organisations to register with a state-established Maison des ONGs, another vehicle for state oversight.

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