Last week France summoned Italian ambassador in Paris Teresa Castaldo for comments made by Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio in which he accused France of manipulating African countries and thereby exacerbating the European migration crisis.
Speaking at a meeting in Italy’s Abruzzo region, Di Maio asserted that he believed France would drop in the rankings of the world’s largest economies had it not been for “what it is doing in Africa.” According to him, “If we have people who are leaving Africa now it’s because some European countries, and France in particular, have never stopped colonising Africa….If France didn’t have its African colonies, because that’s what they should be called, it would be the 15th largest world economy. Instead it’s among the first, exactly because of what it is doing in Africa.”
In an earlier spat, President Emmanuel Macron of France had likened the rise of populism in Italy and other parts of Europe as a form of “leprosy”. Despite France’s reaction, Di Maio has insisted on standing by his comments. He went further to say that he believed France had prevented the economic development of Africa, specifically referring to the .CFA Franc Zone in which 14 African countries are tied to the financial and monetary apron-strings of France. In his words: “I think that France is one of those countries that by printing money for 14 African states prevents their economic development and contributes to the fact that the refugees leave and then die in the sea or arrive on our coasts”. Going further, he notes that, “with these advantages, also their economy has had benefits. Then the problem is that migrants arrive on our coasts. So, until this problem is solved, we will ask Europe to face the issue of decolonisation of Africa that has never ended”.
The French said not a word. Instead, there was a lot of fuming and flustering. I have been a keen student of both Italy and France. I have studied Italian civilisation from Roman times to the Renaissance period and beyond. I have been fascinated by artists such as Leonardo, Rafael, Michelangelo and statesmen such as Garibaldi, Mazzini and his movement Giovanni Italia. I have friends in San Marino and Milan and have spent summer holidays in Lake Cuomo and Mont Blanc. I am always enchanted with Florence and Venice. Italian food remains the healthiest in the world, in my opinion. The Italian genius in science, mathematics and philosophy is second to none: Giandominico Vico, Fibonnaci, Galileo, and Enrico Fermi.
I also studied economics, public administration and law in Paris, arguably the most beautiful city on earth. There is no one equal tothe French in sheer style and intellectual rigour. Today, the world’s greatest mathematicians and philosophers are French. My deepest philosophical influences have been French rather than Anglo-Saxon: Mounier, Sartre, Camus, Derrida, Foucault, Gaston Bachelard, Albert Schweitzer, Simone Weil, Alexis de Tocqueville, Voltaire, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Emmanuel Levinas.
The French are wonderful people. Among the Europeans, they are the best at forging individual friendships with peoples of other cultures. I love France, from the warm beaches of Normandy to the gold-coloured corn fields of the Auvergne and the olive-green coasts of Nice and Saint-Tropez. I have stood transfixed by the timeless serenity of the cathedrals of Chartres and Notre-Dame.
But let the truth be told. The Italians are right. Right from the Congress of Vienna which sealed the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte, France could no longer lay claim to being a European let alone a world, player. The loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1870 nailed the coffin of France’s world power status. That was the moment they turned their attention to Africa. They were among the leaders in the enslavement, colonisation and raping of our continent. They stole our gold, diamonds and other natural resources to build all those fancy buildings you see in Paris today.
Although President Charles de Gaulle reluctantly granted “independence within the French community” to its African colonial dependencies in 1958, all agreed to take the offer except Sekou Toure of Guinea. In revenge, the French tore down all the infrastructures in the country. What they could not take, they dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. They left Guinea in ruins. Similarly, those countries who decided they could not subscribe to all aspects of French imperialism – such as Silvanus Olympio of Togo and Modibbo Keita of Mali were overthrown. More recently, Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire who attempted to chart in independent course was overthrown in a violent war orchestrated by France.
As a matter of fact, what the Italians have been saying about France is what every educated African has known all along. France is the gendarme of the West in Africa. French hegemony works through a shadowy network of informal empire – domination in trade, finance, military and political control. Our so-called “Francophone” brethren remain slaves of the French up to this day. They continue to pay an iniquitous colonial tax as reimbursement for the non-existent benefits of French colonialism. The irony is that it is the French who are supposed to pay us for centuries of enslavement, colonisation, rapine and outright grand larceny. Our Francophone countries have signed dubious military defence pacts with Paris — a carte blanche that gives them the right to militarily overthrow any regime that does not dance to their tune. The whole of their external reserves are lodged in the French Treasury and the Bank of France. Paris decides what and how they spend their money. French companies have the first right of refusal on any major projects. The Bank of France prints their CFA currency and largely determines the broad framework of economic and monetary policy. The whole of the commanding heights of the Francophone economies are controlled by France. French mining interests call the final shots with regards to their natural resources.
In March 2008, former French President Jacques Chirac was quoted as saying, “Without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third world power”. His predecessor, the enigmatic François Mitterrand already prophesied as far back as 1957 that, “Without Africa, France will have no history in the 21st century”.
It is a tragedy that a country that arrogates to itself a position in the centre of universal civilisation can pitch its greatness, not in its innate creativity, but in being a parasite and thief of other people’s natural resources. We in West Africa have borne the brunt of French wickedness. They propped Blaise Campaore to kill his brother Thomas Sankara and to reverse the Burkinabe revolution. For decades they used Campaore to wreck havoc in West Africa. Their leprous hands were implicated in the tragedies that befell Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The French have been training and arming mercenaries across our neighbouring countries. They have a hand in the Boko Haram genocide against an unarmed and defenceless Nigerian populace. When Nigeria and Togo spearheaded the formation of ECOWAS, the French sponsored the creation of a rival West African Francophone Community. Nigeria underwrites 75% of the annual operating budget. But France still influences our neighbouring countries to undermine us at every turn.
Among the Francophone intellectuals only a few people like Cheikh Anta Diop of Senegal and the late Samir Amin of Egypt understood the full nature of French imperialism and its destructive influence on our continent. It is self-evident that the French would do anything to ensure our continent never rises under the sun. The fall of Muammar was their handiwork. I never liked the tyrant but no one could dispute that he was a pan-Africanist. It was a well known fact that Gadaffi had amassed gold bullions worth US$350 billion to back his African Single Currency project. Anybody who championed such a cause would be an enemy of the French and the Americans. Which is why when they overthrew him, all the gold was stolen. They have left Libya in ruins. Their next target is Nigeria.
Obadiah Mailafia
