MFI/Radio France Internationale (Paris)
Marie Joannidis
3 July 2002
analysis
Durban, South Africa — Organizing a Union For Africa - Durban 2002 (7 of 11)
Francophone and Anglophone African countries have often differed and sometimes battled on the political field, especially within the OAU. This old rivalry linked both to the colonial past of these countries and to the role played by their former colonizers as well as to their culture and economic clout, has unquestionably diminished. But it remains to be seen whether the elements of division can be totally erased in the future.
Paris can no longer or no longer wants to play the African gendarme, a role it upheld for years with its Francophone African partners. Today, France acts within a European or multilateral framework. Meanwhile, France has extended its relations outside its traditional zones of influence. At the same time, age-old fears in West Africa are receding : the Francophone countries no longer fear as much as before their powerful Anglophone Nigerian neighbour. Nigeria has become a partner within ECOWAS and has been weakened by internal violence and corruption.
They still face the risk of being confronted with South African hegemony. The continent's economic powerhouse today claims the leadership of Nepad, the New Economic Partnership for African Development. This initiative, aimed at re-launching development on the continent, was endorsed last year in Lusaka at the final OAU summit. Nepad is to be the battle-horse of the new African Union, which holds its first summit in July in Durban, precisely in South Africa. Sponsored by the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, along with his counterparts from Nigeria, Algeria, Senegal and Egypt, Nepad is a major issue for donors, for the G-8 countries in particular who meet in Kananaskis, Canada, in June.
The question of leadership around NEPAD
Given the context, numerous Francophone leaders, but they are not alone, do not hide their irritation at seeing Thabo Mbeki present himself to the developed world as Africa's spokesman and a "giver of lessons" to the rest of the continent. As a result, the Senegalese never miss an opportunity to point out that Nepad was the end result of the merger of the South African millennium plan and President Abdoulaye Wade's Omega plan. The Francophones undeniably scored a point with the election last year of the Ivorian, Amara Essy, to the position of General Secretary of the OAU against heavyweight Anglophone candidates and against the opposition of Libyan leader Mouammar Gadhafi. But the nomination was only a compromise for the transition period to the African Union.
The Francophones make up the largest language group of the 53 OAU members, just in front of the Anglophones, (the others, the Arabic and Portuguese speaking countries along with Spanish speaking Equatorial Guinea are far behind) but they have almost never succeeded in taking the advantage within the pan-African organisation. Singled out for the most part as the block called the "moderates", close partners to France (except for Sekou Toure's Guinea, and Benin under the direction of the first-version Mathieu Kerekou, or Madagascar at the time of triumphant Marxism-Leninism and the Cold War), the Francophones were less present in pan-African debates, frequently preferring a regional approach. They were often less active than the Anglophones when it came time to discuss economics rather than politics. One could point out certain cultural differences with the more pragmatic Anglophones, but also the poor presence of a potential heavyweight like the Côte d'Ivoire, long seen as the locomotive of the Franc-zone or like the former Zaire - now the Democratic Republic of Congo - a country mined with violence, nepotism and corruption under Mobutu Sese Seko, before plunging into the present conflict.
President Felix Houphouet Boigny was also the target of scorn by the so-called "progressives", including the Southern African Front Line States, for his policy of dialogue with South Africa during Apartheid, a dialogue destined, he said, to encourage peaceful change. In this way, he tried to take the lead of the group of "moderates" who were at the time the main interlocutors of the West, but the block were never able to durably impose their points of view on the pan-African organization.
The logic of blocks in the economic domain
After the Cold War, Western countries to a certain degree privileged their relations with countries committed to economic reforms suggested by international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank and dear to the Americans. Thus the preference and support demonstrated for Anglophone countries such as Ghana, and then Uganda. For their part, the existence of the Franc zone favoured links between the Francophones thanks to their single currency, while the links between Anglophones were cemented, despite their divisions, by their membership in the Commonwealth. Another factor grouping countries together on a linguistic basis has appeared more recently, to a certain extent, with the International Organisation of Francophone Countries (OIF, Organisation internationale de la francophonie). The OIF has intervened in the political field these past years with mediation attempts, and worked so that its members, the majority of whom are African, succeed in presenting a common front in international forums, especially when it comes to negotiations of an economic order.
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