AFRICA-FRANCE RELATIONS SINCE 1945: “PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C’EST LA MÊME CHOSE”

Abstract

The French colonial empire did not survive the Second Great War of the twentieth century. However, unlike the British, the French suffered a crushing military defeat at the hands of the Nazis. The greater tragedy done to France, however, was not in the military defeat but, in fact, in the loss of its economy and its support systems. About 400,000 buildings were destroyed, and five times that number was damaged. The country's infrastructure was rendered comatose, and industrial and agricultural production was running at just 40% of what it had been pre-war. As the French citizens looked up to De Gaulle’s government for help, the postwar French state looked up to its African colonies for resources to rebuild the economy. This profoundly impacted the relations between France and Africa. Scholars of Africa’s international relations have examined this discourse but often reason that the independence of French African colonies reclaimed African agency in the relations between Africa and France. In this study, evidence is provided that the basics of Africa-French relations have fundamentally remained the same since 1945. The thrust of the paper is captured in the statement: “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”