How France Has Continued Exploiting Its Former African Colonies
How France Has Continued Exploiting Its Former African Colonies
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How France Has Continued Exploiting Its Former African Colonies
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How France Has Continued Exploiting Its Former African Colonies
How France Has Continued Exploiting Its Former African Colonies
Bolloré's private company is exploiting African countries, that much is obvious.
It's more complicated when it comes to recent military operations that included french troops. The original Serval military operation in Mali was requested by Mali's government at the time, and was a joint Africa-lead operation that involved multiple African and European countries.
Both African and French soldiers died while fighting terrorist groups threatening Mali during these operations.
France's government certainly has some afterthought when they decided to interviene, the most obvious is the desire to have influence in the region. But it's not comparable to colonial times as the headline imply.
France holds 90% of the gold reserves of 15 African nations, and has done for more than the last 70 years. How could you argue it’s not comparable to colonial times? https://x.com/farida_n/status/1607301578834206720
It seems this tweets refers to the CFA currency, which is inherited from colonial times and is indeed bad for nations' monetary inependance.
That being said the tweet exagerates CFA reserves that were (until recently) controlled by France. It was 50% of foreign exchange reserve, not 90% of all nations' reserves. And it's out of date since France started to transfer reserves to the West Africa Central Bank two years ago.
Source : https://www.theafricareport.com/85566/france-begins-transfer-of-e5bn-to-bceao-as-part-of-cfa-franc-reform/
There's also a plan to do away with CFA altogether, and replace it by another currently called Eco.
Plans for Eco are criticized because it's seen as replacing a France-linked currency by a European-linked one.
Source : https://atlantablackstar.com/2022/12/14/is-france-still-holding-half-of-the-reserves-from-14-african-nations/
It's clear this hasn't been completely solved, but the situation has improved and should keep improving. All eyes are on this new Eco currency, we'll see if that happens and it it does, whether it's fair for all nations involved.