The French government will make a statement followed by a debate in the Assembly and then in the Senate, on November 21, on France’s strategy in Africa, where its military presence is contested in several countries, we learned on Saturday 4 November from parliamentary source.
These declarations and debates, in application of article 50-1 of the Constitution, are the result of a promise from Emmanuel Macron to the party leaders he met on August 30 in Saint-Denis. In a letter that he then sent to them, the Head of State estimated that “the exchange on Africa” that he had with the leaders of the political forces had “made it possible to review the situation in several country, in particular in the Sahel”, adding that “the principle of a parliamentary debate as provided for by our Constitution […] has been recorded since the fall on this subject and whenever current events justify it”.
According to a parliamentary source, the meeting will therefore be held on Tuesday November 21 at the end of the afternoon in the Assembly. The Senate had chosen the same date, from 9:30 p.m.
After Mali and Burkina Faso, France had to begin withdrawing its 1,400-strong troops from Niger after President Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown by a military junta. This departure marks the end of an era after a decade of anti-jihadist military intervention in a region where the security situation continues to deteriorate. In all three countries, Paris has been pushed out by military regimes that came to power after coups, riding on anti-French sentiment and turning, in the case of Mali, towards cooperation with the Russian paramilitary group Wagner.
Since his first election, Emmanuel Macron has attempted a change of course in Africa, already present in the Ouagadougou speech in 2017 and then reiterated in February 2023, outlining a less military approach, centered on relations with civil society and “soft power”. “. “Françafrique is dead,” he insisted again in September. But Paris was criticized for its inconsistencies. If he condemned the coup d’état in Niger, he accommodated the first putsch in Mali in 2020 and the following year dubbed Mahamat Idriss Déby, who came to power in Chad without a constitutional process.