AU election unveils France as West’s leading power in Africa

"A resurgent France has a responsibility to keep house in its former ‘colonial neighbourhood’ in Africa.” This audacious argument in a recent article reveals the growing power of France in its former colonial empire in Africa.

The recently-concluded African Union elections have revealed a resurgent France as perhaps the most influential external power in Africa.

Recent events on the European and global scenes have transformed France from one of the “regional powers” in European power politics to a lead power chasing the mantle of global leadership.

In the post-Brexit era, France is only second to Germany as the most powerful nation in the European Union. As the most influential former colonial power in Africa, Paris is naturally the EU’s lead nation on the continent.

Globally, the election of Donald Trump and the dawn of American isolationism has left France as the most influential Western power in Africa.

As a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, France is predisposed to tap into another nodal-point of power: The election of an EU citizen, Antonio Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal, as the new UN Secretary-General.

Continentally, France is far and away the most active military power on the African continent, with its recent military incursions sparking speculation that it is resurrecting its colonial empire in Africa.

TOXIC MIX

But aiding France’s pre-eminent role as an interventionist military power is a toxic mix of civil wars, weak institutions and violent extremism particularly in the Sahel region.

French military assertiveness in Africa was vivid in Libya during the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi (2011). In 2012, Paris dispatched 4,000 soldiers to Mali to rout jihadists; and in 2013, it deployed 1,600 troops to the Central African Republic to stem sectarian violence in Bangui.

France’s military presence in the rest of its former colonies is almost as present in 2017 as it was in the early 20th century.

Ironically, France cashed in on its immense soft power capacities and resources on the continent to influence the outcomes of the AU elections.

France enjoys a historical, cultural and diplomatic sway in 26 Francophone countries out of Africa’s 55 nations. Although Rwanda changed its official language recently to English, a majority of its older generation elite speaks French.

French is an official language in parts of Portuguese-speaking Africa, including Cape Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe and Guinea Bissau. And in recent years, France has also made significant inroads in winning over corporate and power elite in English-speaking Africa.

PAID OFF

Investing in soft power paid off handsomely. Paris is, for all intents and purposes, the de facto “winner” in the AU elections.

The French factor was palpable during the elections. Two of the three top contenders for the Chair of AU Commission were from the French zone: Senegal’s Abdoulaye Bathily and Chad’s Moussa Faki Mahamat.

Senegal’s Bathily may have lost out because he was widely seen as “France’s man”. But France and EU seem to have thrown their lot behind Chad’s Mahamat.

After the election, Arab-speaking and French-speaking countries (Chad, Algeria, Burkina Faso and Egypt) now hold three of the five top AU Commission seats, with a lone Ghana replacing Kenya as Deputy Chair.

This victory has upset the AU system of governance based on the model of “regional powers” or anchor states.

Africa’s anchor states (South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya) lost power at the AU’s top echelons.

Besides losing its bid to capture the AU top seat, Kenya’s term as deputy chair held by Erastus Mwencha expired in January 2017.

Nigeria’s Fatimah Mohammed lost the election for the position of African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security, which went to the incumbent, Smail Chergui of Algeria.

ORDINARY MEMBER

And South Africa has been reduced to an ordinary member of the AU Peace and Security Council, the first time since 2002, following Dlamini Zuma’s exit.

France’s behind-the-curtain influence aside, one account of why Botswana’s Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi and Kenya’s Amina Mohamed lost is that some leaders preferred a male chairman.

But gender did not play a pivotal part; experience and astute power politics on the Chadian side did.

Unlike Chad’s Mahamat, Amina is not a career politician, but a first-term Foreign Minister – a fact the Chadians preyed on to depict her as lightweight in the crucial security sector.

Amina was contrasted to the winner, Moussa Faki, a former Chadian prime minister and a sitting foreign affairs minister at a time when N’Djamena is leading the regional onslaught against the Nigerian armed group, Boko Haram, and backstopping the peace-building process in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Mahamat was not new to AU politics, having previously held a senior position at the AU as chairman of the Economic, Social and Cultural Council. Moreover, his boss, President Idris Deby, was the chairman of Union until January 2017.

BE WARM

Kenya’s loss has shown that France’s relations with Kenya may be warm, but are still work in progress. Arguably, Kenya may have lost its bid for the top AU seat to France, not to Chad.

Recognising France’s influence in AU politics ahead of the election, Kenya dispatched its diplomats to lobby Paris. Sadly, Nairobi’s diplomatic foray did not pay off.

It did not help matters that Kenya and France (EU) have not seen eye to eye on the International Criminal Court (ICC) controversy. During the elections, word went round that the Hague-based court, often accused of bias against African nations, was doomed if Amina was elected.

In a palpable way, the AU elections have revealed the limits of Kenya’s soft power and the vulnerability of its pan-African ambitions. In 2013, Kenya adopted an assertive foreign policy with Africa as its centrepiece.

President Uhuru Kenyatta is eligible for election as the Chairperson of the African Union in January 2018.

But his foreign policy strategists have to return to the drawing board and devise ways of managing power rivalry in the Horn of Africa and to win France over.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is chief executive, Africa Policy Institute.