France slashes its African military presence, but Africans remain skeptical

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French President Emmanuel Macron, bruised by the forced withdrawal of French troops from two West African countries where Russia is gaining influence, has promised “deep humility” and a “reduced footprint” in his new African strategy.

Mr. Macron, on the eve of a visit to four African nations, said France is planning a reorganization that includes a “noticeable reduction” in its military presence in Africa, accompanied by greater African involvement in its bases. Instead of maintaining all of its traditional bases, France will focus more on training and equipping African forces, and it will establish academies to be comanaged by French and African armies, he announced in the speech in Paris this week.

Over the past year, Mr. Macron’s government has suffered a humiliating setback in its traditional African policy. It was obliged to pull its troops out of Mali and Burkina Faso at the urging of the military juntas that had seized power in both countries, and it was forced to watch Russia make dramatic gains in both countries, including the deployment of about 1,000 Russian mercenaries in Mali.

Mr. Macron denied that he is competing with Moscow in Africa. But he pitched France as a strong partner for Africa, offering a range of connections – in culture, business, sports and the diaspora – that implicitly contrasted with Russia’s military and security preoccupation. He even addressed a long-standing African grievance by promising that French museums would accelerate the repatriation of historic African artwork that had been looted during the colonial era.

Analysts, however, were unimpressed with the new French strategy, complaining of a lack of detail and a repetition of old rhetoric. They noted that Mr. Macron did not provide any specifics on France’s troop reduction or the locations of new academies.

Even in the West African metropolis of Abidjan – a foreign investment hub in Ivory Coast with friendly relations with Paris – one expert said Mr. Macron’s speech is unlikely to win any new converts.

“It has been greeted by a significant amount of skepticism,” said William Assanvo, a senior researcher in Abidjan for the Institute for Security Studies.

“People see it as public relations,” he told The Globe and Mail. “They’re used to this kind of speech. The core of the relationship will not change overnight just because of a change of tone.”

To some extent, analysts said, Mr. Macron was forced to make a virtue from a necessity. He was pressed into a scaled-back military presence because French troops are now simply unwelcome in some countries after years of failure in their campaigns against Islamist insurgencies. In countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso, public fury at France has been highly visible in street protests.

“He’s definitely worried about what’s happening, and he wants to give the impression that France is willing to listen and change and evolve into a partnership,” Mr. Assanvo said.

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Mr. Macron insisted that France is not withdrawing all of its troops. It still has about 3,000 troops in West Africa, mostly in Niger and Chad, although this is sharply reduced from a force of 5,100 troops just two years ago.

Last year, it formally ended its Barkhane military mission, a French-led anti-jihadist operation in which Mali and Burkina Faso were two of its five partner countries. But France continues to maintain military units and special forces at several bases in West Africa, capable of intervention almost anywhere.

“We’ll no longer see the huge military operations like Barkhane, but the military and security relationship will remain, even if scaled down and less visible,” Mr. Assanvo said.

France’s revamped strategy is widely seen as a response to the emerging Russian challenge, especially the thousands of mercenaries from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group that have arrived in recent years in Mali, Central African Republic, Sudan and Libya. The French President insisted, however, that he is uninterested in any battle with Russia for strategic influence in Africa.

“Many would like to push us into a competition – a competition that I believe belongs in the past,” Mr. Macron said in his speech.

“This would be falling into a trap set by those who want us to try and show our might. ‘Look, some are coming with their armies and mercenaries, go and compete with them.’ I don’t believe in this.”

And yet, for a politician who claims to be indifferent to Russian competition, he seemed to be remarkably angry at Russia’s private army in Africa. Wagner Group is “a group of criminal mercenaries, the life insurance of failing regimes and putschists,” he said.

Yvan Guichaoua, a West Africa expert in the Brussels School of International Studies at the University of Kent in England, said Mr. Macron is trying to revive France’s image in Africa “to make it seem less imperialist and more forward-looking.”

But the French government had little choice in the matter, he said. “They realize they made some mistakes. Some introspection is going on.”

Bruno Charbonneau, director of the Centre for Security and Crisis Governance at Royal Military College Saint-Jean in Quebec, noted that Mr. Macron is the latest in a long line of French presidents who promised to reform France’s policy in Africa. “Yet all of these presidents ended up engaging French troops in African conflicts and security affairs,” he told The Globe.

Even when French troops are sometimes withdrawn from African countries, they retain the capacity to be rapidly deployed back to those countries, Mr. Charbonneau said. “This operational mindset has not fundamentally changed. It’s all about force projection, and French troops can project military force from bases in France.”