Another month, another coup in Francophone Africa.
After Niger in July, this time it was Gabon, whose President Ali Bongo found himself detained in the same presidential palace that Emmanuel Macron visited six months ago. It was the eighth military takeover in a former French colony in the past three years.
Macron likes to remind his African audiences that he is the first French president born after independence swept the continent, and he took office vowing to reset relations with former colonies in Africa. Change has come, but not on his terms — whether democratically elected or longtime authoritarians, the men whom France supports are dropping like flies.
The spate of coups has been driven in part by rising anti-French sentiment — which in turn has been gleefully exploited by Russia — and frustration with the corruption and neglect of regimes that have long been allied with Paris, despite their democratic shortcomings.
Tellingly, condemnation of the latest armed putsch from a regional body was signed by the Central African Republic’s president, Faustin Archange Touadera, who last month pushed through a referendum to secure an unconstitutional third term. He was also the first Francophone African leader to break with France and hire the Russian mercenary group, Wagner.
Macron has spent weeks calling for the restoration of Niger’s president, Mohamed Bazoum. But he’s stayed largely mum about Bongo’s plight, recognition that Gabon’s case is “very distinct” from Niger, as the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell put it yesterday. While Bazoum is generally seen to have been fairly elected, Bongo was declared the winner of an election last weekend that was widely viewed as, per Borrell, “rigged.”
But Paris has plenty of other friends in Gabon’s neighborhood that fit Bongo’s authoritarian bill — Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Chad, to name a few.
It remains to be seen whether it’ll take a coup for France to break ties with them. — Neil Munshi