Three years ago France had nearly 8,500 soldiers stationed in Africa, including 5,300 deployed in the Sahel region of the north of the continent as part of Operation Barkhane. Within a few months their numbers will have dwindled to just over 1,500, with only a few hundred - or perhaps just a few dozen - remaining in West Africa.
Only Djibouti - a small country in the Horn of Africa where thousands of American, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, German and French soldiers are stationed and monitor one another - will still host a French base of any real significance.
This drastic reduction is a reality Paris has been forced to endure ever since French troops were expelled from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Then on November 28th France officially lost, on paper, more than 1,300 soldiers from its deployment in Africa.
That day, in announcements that came within a matter of minutes of each other, France saw two of its historic footholds on the continent vanish in quick succession. First was Dakar, where the French army has been present for nearly two centuries, where it remained after Senegal’s independence in 1960, and where it currently maintains 350 troops today. Then came N’Djamena, the capital of Chad and a city the French army has not left since the early 1980s, a base from which it has conducted six overseas operations over the past sixty years, including the major Operation Barkhane from 2014 to 2022, and where it currently has a thousand soldiers stationed.
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In Senegal, it was President Bassirou Diomaye Faye who made the announcement during a round of interviews with French media as part of the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the Thiaroye massacre. “What country can claim independence while hosting foreign soldiers on its soil? France would not accept it, so it shouldn't impose it on other nations. We're working on a military cooperation doctrine that will not accept the presence of Russian, French, American or Emirati forces,” he told Le Monde.
A long-expected decision by Senegal
This announcement came as no surprise. The departure of French troops has been a central demand of Faye’s party, the Patriotes Africains du Sénégal Pour le Travail, l’Éthique et la Fraternité (PASTEF) and was eagerly anticipated by his support base.
“We expected nothing less after his election. The only question was when the decision would be made,” said a French diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity. The timing was carefully chosen.
More than seven months after his first-round victory in the presidential election, Faye used the media attention surrounding the anniversary of the Thiaroye massacre to end the suspense. He also took advantage of a new political landscape: PASTEF, which had been a minority party before the November 17th legislative elections, now has a comfortable majority in the country's National Assembly, with 130 seats out of 165.
“We now have free rein to implement our programme,” said a presidential adviser, adding that the withdrawal of French troops was inevitable. According to the military cooperation treaty signed between France and Senegal after independence and revised in 2012, the French army will have six months to leave once officially given notice in writing by the Senegalese authorities.
A surprise from Chad
The announcement from Chad, however, was far less expected. Admittedly, relations between Paris and N’Djamena had been relatively strained in recent months. In addition to the legal problems that President Mahamat Idriss Déby faces in France, disagreements have emerged on several issues, notably one seen as a priority in N’Djamena: that of Sudan.
France has demanded that its Chadian ally remain neutral in the conflict between the two Sudanese rivals, Abdelfattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. It suspects Chad of quietly supporting the latter, particularly by facilitating arms deliveries. This criticism has not gone down well in N’Djamena, which has long considered Sudan’s situation to be a matter of national security and, therefore, an internal political issue.
Despite these differences, the announcement of the end of military cooperation came as a bolt out of the blue in Paris. At the Quai d’Orsay - the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs - some initially refused to believe it. And for good reason: the news broke only minutes after the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, had ended a visit to Chad.
On November 28th Barrot visited a refugee camp in the country’s north-east, near the border with Sudan. After returning to N’Djamena, he then met with President Déby before departing for Ethiopia.
According to several French and Chadian sources, military cooperation was indeed discussed, as was Sudan, during this meeting between the new minister and the young president, who was elected in May after a disputed election three years after seizing power with French support. However, a complete break was never explicitly mentioned. Or as an Chadian official put it: “Not in so many words.”
Yet the statement issued by the Chadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the evening of November 28th, just after Barrot had left the country, could not have been clearer. The government announced its “decision to terminate the defence cooperation agreement” signed between France and Chad in 2019. In other words, French troops in N’Djamena will also have to pack their bags.
We'd been discussing it for a long time; it was in the president’s manifesto.
This decision “marks an historic turning point,” the statement read. “It's time for Chad to assert its full sovereignty and reconsider its strategic partnerships based on national priorities.” However, officials in N’Djamena insist this is by no means a complete break.
“This is nothing like the situation in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso,” said a diplomatic source, referring to three countries where French troops were expelled in 2022 and 2023, followed by the severing of diplomatic ties with Paris.
For the authorities in Chad, this decision is neither about ending its “friendship” with France nor replacing French troops with others, such as Russian soldiers for example. “It's a decision by a sovereign state that believes it no longer needs to rely on a foreign army, even a friendly one, to protect its borders,” said a diplomatic source.
According to Chad’s minister for foreign affairs, Abderaman Koulamallah, it was a carefully considered decision. “We'd been discussing it for a long time; it was in the president’s manifesto,” he told Mediapart.
However, neither the Élysée Palace, France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor its Ministry of Armed Forces had been informed. As recently as November 6th, Jean-Marie Bockel, who since February has been Emmanuel Macron’s special envoy for military restructuring in Africa, told members of the French Parliament that the African heads of state he had consulted, including Déby, “did not want disengagement.”
France seeks to save face
For months, French political and military leaders have expressed a desire to adopt a new approach. Aware of the strong opposition among African populations to the presence of French troops - seen as outdated and an affront to sovereignty - they wanted to “reconfigure” their military presence in order to make it “less visible.”
In February 2023, Macron said he wanted to ensure that there would no longer be “military bases as such”. However, there was no suggestion of a complete withdrawal or departure.
According to multiple sources, the most likely scenario envisaged a significant reduction in troop numbers - a hundred soldiers each in Dakar and Libreville (down from 350 currently), another hundred in Abidjan (down from 600 today), and close to 300 in N’Djamena (down from 1,000 currently). The status of the bases themselves were to be changed and then handed over to the host nations.
Bockel’s mission was to present these various options to the heads of state in the countries concerned. In recent months, he has visited Chad, Gabon and Ivory Coast, and had plans to travel to Senegal – until, that is, President Faye changed course.
It's been two years since Macron started talking about a new structure, and nothing's happened. Our partners have grown tired of waiting.
At the Ministry of the Armed Forces in Paris, officials are putting on a brave face, claiming that these announcements do not change much. “Bases are outdated today,” explained one officer. “It's better to have more a flexible presence. That was the direction we were heading in, and the announcements from Senegal and Chad don't necessarily contradict that goal.”
It is, however, a significant blow to France's military. For years, N’Djamena has been considered the ideal launchpad for operations on the continent due to its strategic geographical position and the close relationship forged over time between French and Chadian officers. “There's a genuine camaraderie between us, a unique bond,” remarked a general stationed in N’Djamena some years ago.
Privately, some officers describe this as an “irreplaceable loss” and criticise the political leadership’s indecision. “It's been two years since Macron started talking about a new framework, and nothing's been done. Our partners have grown tired of waiting,” one officer lamented. Others believe there may still be room for negotiation with N’Djamena.
But while the French authorities see the development as a setback, in Africa it is being celebrated as a victory - even an historic turning point. “It's a good decision. We should have ended this military presence long ago as it has brought us nothing,” said Kamadji Demba Karyom, a Chadian activist who has criticised French interference in her country for years.
However, Raphaël Granvaud, a member of the anti-corruption and anti-poverty non-governmental organization Survie and the author of a book on the long history of French military interventions in Africa - Que fait l’armée française en Afrique? ('What's the French Army doing in Africa?' published by Agone/Survie in 2009) - urges caution. “It might be an historic step forward, but it's too soon to speak of a complete break,” he argued. “There's undoubtedly a broader movement that could lead to the disappearance of the French army in Africa in its current form. But nothing is yet certain. It will depend on what replaces it. We also need to see whether external operations are truly abandoned.”
Over the past sixty years, France has conducted around fifty external operations in Africa. The most recent, Operation Barkhane, was coordinated from N’Djamena and would probably not have been possible without the bases in Dakar and Abidjan.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter