Is Francafrique ending? Why Senegal is cutting military ties with France
Al Jazeera
A wave of African countries is pushing the former coloniser back, but Senegal is the only one without military leaders.
In Senegal, a country bustling with French-owned businesses and nationals, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s recent announcement that France should shut down its military bases should have come as a surprise. Yet, analysts say, it was a move that was always going to come.
In November, Faye asked Paris to remove some 350 French troops stationed on Senegalese soil, effectively ending a defence pact that had existed for decades and continuing a trend that has seen many West African nations sever or downgrade once-strong ties with former coloniser France in recent years.
In an interview with the AFP news agency, the Senegalese president – who was elected earlier this year on the back of a nationalistic campaign that promised to review Dakar’s relations with Paris – said France’s continued military presence in the country was not compatible with Senegal’s sovereignty.
“Senegal is an independent country, it is a sovereign country and sovereignty does not accept the presence of military bases in a sovereign country,” Faye said, speaking from the presidential palace in Dakar. Faye did not give a deadline for when the soldiers needed to leave.
The move came as Senegal marked the 80th anniversary of the mass killings of West African soldiers by colonial forces on the morning of December 1, 1944. The men, West African soldiers of the Tirailleurs Senegalais unit who fought in France’s war against Nazi Germany, had been protesting delays in salaries and poor living conditions when colonial soldiers fired on them.
