Africa and France – historically and in these times. Doi: 10.5020/2317-2150.2015.v20n3p807

Abstract

For France, the so-called francophonie Africa or the total of 22 countries, mostly in west, northeast, central and southeast Africa (Indian Ocean) that France conquered and occupied in Africa during the course of the pan-European invasion of Africa during the 15th-19th centuries, belong to France in perpetuity. This is in spite of the presumed restoration of independence, since the 1960s, of each of the states concerned. French presidents and top officials of the French republic since the end of World War II, irrespective of ideological or political orientation, attest to this key position in French international politics. Quests for African freedom from this subjugation will be central in charting the salient defining transformative features of African-French relations of this new millennium.