French poll hogs media limelight as Africans relegated to periphery

A woman casts her ballot during the first round of the French presidential elections, on April 22, 2017 in Remire-Montjoly, French Guiana. PHOTO | JODY AMIET | AFP

What you need to know:

  • The election has serious implications for Africa, especially former French colonies, which have maintained close links with France, mainly through an organisation known as Francophonie.
  • As French electoral affairs hog the limelight, events in Africa are bound to be relegated to the backburner, including the mounting cross-border refugee crises sparked by instability in South Sudan and the DR Congo.

For the next few days — or weeks — the world is likely to focus on the French presidential election, whose first round is on Sunday, and which could well go into a second one on May 7.

The election has serious implications for Africa, especially former French colonies, which have maintained close links with France, mainly through an organisation known as Francophonie.

For the rest of the continent, the fact that the poll comes just months after the dramatic one in the United States is significant, as is the fact that Britain is set to hold flash national elections in June, hot on the heels of the Brexit plebiscite.

Paradoxically, as French electoral affairs hog the limelight, events in Africa are bound to be relegated to the backburner, including the mounting cross-border refugee crises sparked by instability in South Sudan and the DR Congo.

VOLATILE TERRITORIES

Already, countries like Uganda and Angola that border these volatile territories are feeling the pinch as refugees flee the violence.

Alarmingly, the number of refugees in Uganda is reportedly comparable to the figure of mostly Syrians who fled to Europe at the height of the migrant crisis in 2015.

Not surprisingly, an official at the sprawling Bidibidi camp was recently quoted as referring to the influx of refugees from South Sudan as a tsunami that Uganda could barely cope with.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 830,000 South Sudanese have already entered the country, and the figure is expected to hit the million mark by mid-year.

Bidibidi camp, which opened in August to cope with a flood of desperate people fleeing factional fighting in South Sudan, has reportedly overtaken Kenya’s Dadaab complex as the world’s biggest refugee camp.

RISING VIOLENCE

Angola is bearing the brunt of rising violence in the Kasai region of DR Congo, which according to UNHCR has left at least 400 people dead and forced more than 11,000 to seek safety in the neighbouring country.

According to the UN agency, border points and villages inside the Southern African nation have witnessed a sharp increase in arrivals, with more than 9,000 in April alone, arriving mainly in Dundo, the capital of north-eastern Luanda Norte Province.

In the meantime, it should not be forgotten that the US, France and Britain are among the superpowers endowed with veto powers at the UN Security Council.

Significantly, national elections in those countries come with policy shifts that have major repercussions on the global geopolitical landscape. For Africa, revised policies of the new administrations in those countries have serious implications.

INCREASINGLY INTROSPECTIVE

Equally important for Africa is how such policies will affect relations between the continent and the northern hemisphere nations currently undergoing major socio-economic and political metamorphoses.

Africa is also likely to be affected by the fact that in recent years, Western countries have become increasingly introspective, with rightist politicians often carrying the day in the elections.

The result so far has been that African issues are unlikely to feature prominently on the agenda of such leaders, who like US President Donald Trump are unabashedly preoccupied with the welfare of their people.

As Western countries’ lists of priorities change dramatically, for Africa the upshot is that the continent has little choice but to look out for itself.

Tellingly, in recent years there have been major policy shifts in Western countries whose increasingly rightist leaders are struggling to meet the new demands of citizens preoccupied with their own survival.

More and more voters in the West are gripped by such matters as morbid mistrust of globalisation and fear of terrorism. The implications for Africa are that it has to learn to resolve its crises and look closer home for solutions.