What role has the end of the Francafrique era played in France’s current crisis? How are France’s debt crisis and the loss of its influence in Africa connected?

This material was published on October 2, 2025, on the website Meinbezirk.at.

On 18 September, more than one million people across France took to the streets to protest against the austerity measures proposed by the government. Just ten days earlier, parliament passed a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister François Bayrou, making him the fourth head of government to resign in less than two years. The split in the National Assembly, following the snap parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron in June 2024, has made governing the country virtually impossible. France’s public debt has climbed to €3.345 trillion, while Macron’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point since he took office.

The EU’s second-largest economy is now facing an unprecedented domestic political crisis, driven by its ballooning public debt. Debt stands at 113% of GDP, while the budget deficit – at 5.8% – exceeds the 3% limit set by EU rules. The budget plan proposed by Bayrou was aimed at a significant reduction in spending and an increase in taxes in order to bring the deficit down to 4.6% of GDP. But cuts to social spending provoked strong resistance from both the opposition and the population. Lacking a parliamentary majority, the newly appointed Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is unlikely to push through in parliament a budget plan aimed at increasing the tax burden on ordinary people. As a result, analysts expect France’s debt to keep rising.

There are many factors that have caused Paris’s suffocating debt crisis. One of the most important is Macron’s systematic failures in Africa and the end of the Francafrique era as a phenomenon.

Africa’s wealth – France’s lost safety net

“If we look at the present, the ongoing economic crisis and, of course, the weakening of France’s influence in Africa are highly significant… France once had significant dominance in the region. It had a say in the sphere of valuable resources extracted there: minerals, oil, natural gas, and, essentially, in everything related to energy. However, as African countries began the process of self-organization, independent of France, they, in a sense, pushed France out of a number of areas. This, of course, led to the fact that it faced difficulties in economic terms,” said Damla Taşkın, lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Ankara Science University, on Türk Haber TV.

The withdrawal of French troops from Sahel countries in recent years has become the clearest symbol of the end of the so-called Francafrique era – a system of informal relationships that ensured France’s continued influence in its former African colonies after they gained independence. One of the main mechanisms of this system was the protection of the interests of certain African leaders in exchange for granting France exclusive rights to develop natural resources. Access to cheap raw materials was one of the key conditions for the economic growth of the Fifth Republic. And that, in turn, allowed the country to allocate enormous funds to healthcare, education, pensions and social support. For decades, France has been spending more than it earns.

The role of Africa in France’s development can be measured by the words of former French president Jacques Chirac, who noted in 2008 that “a large part of the money in our wallets comes precisely from the exploitation of Africa over the centuries.” The gradual loss of access to African resources, both because of growing anti-French sentiment on the continent and because of the interest of major external players such as China, Russia and Turkey, has led to France being deprived of significant financial means.

Therefore, in addition to the loss of military presence in a number of African countries, no less important a consequence of the collapse of French policy in the Sahel has been the retreat and weakening of the positions of French companies in places where they had dominated for decades.

In 2024, Niger’s government, which came to power as a result of a military coup a year earlier, deprived the nuclear company Orano (formerly Areva), 90% owned by the French state, of operational control over three uranium mines in the country, and in 2025 it decided to nationalize the Somair mine, accusing Orano of appropriating a disproportionately large share of the uranium extracted at the site. The French company had been mining uranium in Niger since 1971, and its local subsidiary Somair provided Orano with about 15% of its total uranium production. In July, Orano stated that Somair was on the verge of bankruptcy because of export restrictions imposed by Niger’s military government.

The halt of uranium mining in Niger became a significant blow for France, which imported 20%of the volumes required for the operation of its nuclear power plants from Niger. It is especially important that the former metropole had been receiving uranium at lower prices thanks to Francafrique policy and the privileged position of French companies in the country.

“The contribution of the colonies to the dynamics of the French economy is well known. Take, for example, uranium contracts, and not only those. With the recent break in relations following the regime change in Niger, you saw that France lost most of its contracts. And that means that France today is forced to buy uranium at its real price on the international market. Before, it was practically robbery: they simply went in and took the uranium, and that was it. France did not spend much money on extracting this mineral, on maintaining the operation of its huge industrial machine…” said Ibrahim Atcha, journalist-reporter for the Togolese outlet Temps Nouveaux, on 16 September.

According to Nigerien reporter Abdoulaye Koulibaly, since the leaders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso broke off relations with the former colonial power, “the significant resources that it had exploited with impunity in the Sahel… have dried up. That is why now it has to tighten its belt to survive… Yesterday, while presenting the draft budget for 2026, the French government announced a whole series of measures aimed at saving €22 billion, that is, about 15 trillion CFA francs. This astronomical deficit vividly proves how vital the resources of the AES [Alliance of Sahel States] were for France, which had made the region its cash cow…” he said in July on Niger’s Tele Sahel.

Another French company – Bolloré Group, which controlled all the main ports and routes in West and Central Africa – had to sell its subsidiary Bolloré Africa Logistics to the Swiss company MSC Group for $6 billion in 2022. Considering that Africa accounted for a substantial part of the company’s turnover, this was a significant loss. In 2017, out of Bolloré’s total revenue of €18.3 billion, €2.5 billion came from Africa. After selling its African assets in 2022, the company’s revenues dropped almost sevenfold, amounting to only €3.13 billion in 2024 compared with €20.677 billion two years earlier.

In addition to the obvious economic losses resulting from the loss of France’s influence in the Sahel, as well as the systematic failures of the largest French companies, there is an increasing trend across West Africa toward the nationalization of mineral extraction. This further weakens the economic potential of Paris, which for decades had rested on neocolonial relations with Africa.

“France took much from us: gold, diamonds and, recently, uranium. As you can see, we have an important uranium deposit in Bakouma, and the French agreed among themselves to buy this uranium without our permission, because they consider it their resource. They bought it between 2006 and 2008 for just a few million euros… We believe that, as written in the new constitution, all the resources of the Central African Republic are the exclusive property of the people. I think that in the near future we must nationalize everything that France bought for next to nothing,” said Fidèle Gouandjika, special adviser to the president of the Central African Republic, in September.

The key role of African resources in ensuring France’s development was also pointed out by Algerian political analyst Mohamed Ben Kharouf. “…Even after France’s departure from Africa and the independence of all African countries in the 1960s, they still remained subordinated to France. That is how France was able to build its economy, its infrastructure, and what it is today. It reached top positions in the world – thanks to what? Not because France offered or produced something, like Germany, but because it took from the African colonies, especially the most valuable resources,” he noted in August.

In such a situation, instead of taking effective steps to establish relations with African countries, Macron irritated them even further with his words that “not a single” Sahel state would be “sovereign” if France had not stationed its troops in the region, and that African countries had “forgotten to say thank you” to France. These words of the president, which he pronounced during a meeting with ambassadors in Paris in January, provoked a sharp reaction from African leaders, who accused Macron of showing disdain toward Africa and Africans.

“France has become rejected by the international community, especially Africa, which once relied on it and which France itself perceived as its economic reserve,” noted Mohamed Ben Kharouf on 12 September.

France has still not been able to fully adapt to the end of the Francafrique era. Today Africa has become an arena of struggle for influence and resources among major global players such as China, the United States, Russia, Turkey, India and others. Against this background, if Paris fails to reconsider its model of relations with its former colonies, it risks deepening its debt crisis even further and losing the remnants of its political influence on the continent.