It's for strategic reasons dating back to the cold war, but this site is really not suited to actual political discussion so I won't bother. Just read this article on
Françafrique and you'll see.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Françafrique
In
international relations,
Françafrique (French pronunciation:
[fʁɑ̃safʁik]) is
France’s
sphere of influence (or
pré carré in
French, meaning
backyard) over former
French and
Belgian colonies in
sub-Saharan Africa.
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] The term was derived from the expression
France-Afrique, which was used by the first President of
Ivory Coast,
Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in 1955 to describe his country's close ties with France.
[1] It was later renamed
Françafrique by
François-Xavier Verschave in 1998 to criticise the alleged corrupt and clandestine activities of various Franco-African political, economic and military networks.
[1]
Following the accession to independence of its African colonies beginning in 1959,
[9] France continued to maintain a sphere of influence over the new countries, which was critical to then President
Charles de Gaulle's vision of France as a global power (or
grandeur in French) and as a bulwark to British and American influence in a post-colonial world.
[3] The
United States supported France's continuing presence in Africa to prevent the region from falling under
Soviet influence during the
Cold War.
[3] France kept close political, economic, military and cultural ties with its former African colonies that were multi-layered, involving institutional, semi-institutional and informal levels.
[1][3]
Françafrique has been characterised by several features that emerged during the Cold War, the first of which was the
African cell, a group that comprised the
French President and his close advisors who made policy decisions on Africa, often in close collaboration with powerful business networks and the French secret service.
[1] Another feature was the
franc zone, a
currency union that
pegged the currencies of most
francophone African countries to the
French franc.
[1][3] Françafrique was also based, in large part, on the concept of
coopération, which was implemented through a series of cooperation accords that allowed France to establish close political, economic, military and cultural ties with its former African colonies.
[3] France also saw itself as a guarantor of stability in the region and therefore adopted an interventionist policy in Africa, resulting in military interventions that averaged once a year from 1960 to the mid-1990s.
[3][10] Finally, a central feature of
Françafrique were the personal networks that underpinned the informal, family-like relationships between French and African leaders. These networks often lacked oversight and scrutinity, which led to
corruption and state
racketeering.
[1][3]
After the Cold War, the
Françafrique regime has weakened over the years due to France's budgetary constraints, greater public scrutiny at home, the deaths of pivotal
Françafrique actors (
Foccart,
Mitterrand,
Pasqua and members of
Elf) and the integration of France into the
European Union.
[1][3] Economic liberalisation,
high indebtedness and
political instability of the former African colonies have reduced their political and economic attractiveness, leading France to adopt a more pragmatic and hard-nose approach to its African relations.
[1][3]
