*Photo: Professor Kehinde Yusuf*
Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao, MD, is a Zimbabwean medical doctor, precisely, a Family Medicine expert, married to the very supportive Ghanaian Pan-Africanist, Dr. Nii Saban Quao, MD, specialist in Internal Medicine, whom she met in the United States.
According to her, she was quietly plying her trade, when, in 2017, she was unexpectedly invited by HE Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to take up the position of African Union (AU) Representative to the United States. When, reluctantly, she assumed office, she was confronted most directly with Western policies and practices detrimental to African interests; and, like the Pan-African activist that she was, she voiced her dissatisfaction stridently.
Finding her African liberationist voice intolerable, as reported by the 24 October, 2019 issue of Amsterdam News (New York), a letter to her from the AU Chair at the time, H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat, a former Chadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, read in part: “I have the honor to inform you that, in line with the terms and conditions of the service governing your appointment as Permanent Representative of the African Union Mission to the United States in Washington, D.C., I have decided to terminate your contract in that capacity with effect from Nov. 1, 2019.”
The sack sparked swift international outrage. In this regard, the Amsterdam News (New York) noted: “Supporters such as Jerry Rawlings, the former president of Ghana who, upon learning of her dismissal tweeted: ‘The dismissal of Arikana Chihombori-Quao, AU ambassador to the United States, raises serious questions about the independence of the AU. For someone who spoke her mind about the detrimental effects of colonization and the huge cost of French control in several parts of Africa, this is an act that can best be described as coming from French-controlled colonized-minds.’”
Moreover, a petition demanding her reinstatement gathered over 100,000 signatures. Asked if she was surprised by the massive global support, she said: “Absolutely. … I did not realize that the work that I had been doing had reached that far. I was just a mother, a grandmother, who happened to be a diplomat speaking our truth. But also I felt that I had been given a platform to represent 1.27 billion people on the planet and 250 million within the Americas and that if I did not speak up about the evils and the ills I see every day, I saw every day, and continue to see every day, then that would mean the 1.27 billion people on the continent and the 250 million in the Americas will be voiceless. That is not something I was willing to do.”
As such, rather than make her cower before the international powers-that-be, the dismissal strengthened her resolve to play her part in liberating Africa. Chihombori-Quao’s thesis is that, in 1884, the Berlin Conference held in which Europeans divided Africa among themselves; and did so in a cynical way, by cutting up erstwhile solid states or vast empires into tiny ineffectual countries which couldn’t assert themselves on the global scene, but needed props from the European hegemons. The vulnerable condition of these countries facilitated the continuation of colonialism by other means. She has been of the view that France was most predatory in its colonial exertions, and that when the country was pressurised to leave the continent, France emplaced inequitable conditions which undermined the sovereignty of the colonised nations and ensured that French colonialism continued effectively, especially in West Africa.
The French policy of ending colonisation without decolonisng is referred to by the obnoxious term ‘Françafrique’. According to a 5 February, 2020 piece by Filip Noubel titled “‘Françafrique’: A term for a contested reality in Franco-African relations,” in GlobalVoices.org, “‘Françafrique’ is a term that describes the historical relationship between France and its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. … A portmanteau linking ‘France’ and the French word for Africa. … In its broadest definition, it encompasses the political, financial, military, cultural, and linguistic relations between France and the countries that came under French rule or influence – Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal.”
Moreover, in a 23 March, 2018 article, titled “Françafrique: A brief history of a scandalous word,” in New African magazine, Boubacar Boris Diop states: “A Janus-faced entity – one African, the other French – Françafrique is the ultimate symbol of a confiscated, perverted sovereignty. … [T]his singular coinage perfectly illustrates France’s dogged refusal to decolonise.”
Adem Kiliç, in a 16 November, 2021 piece on “The system of Western exploitation in Africa and the case of France,” in the United World International, lists the terms of the agreements on ‘independence’ as follows: “According to the signed colonization agreements, (1) The newly independent countries have to pay for the infrastructure that France built in the country during colonialism. (2) African countries have to deposit their national monetary resources in the Bank of France. (3) France has the priority in purchasing all natural resources of its former colonies. (4) In public tenders, it is imperative to give priority to French companies. (5) Africans have to send their senior education officers to France or French military infrastructures, due to a multifaceted system of scholarships and grants tied to the colonization treaty. (6) In accordance with the signed colonization agreement, France has the right to intervene militarily in African countries and permanently deploy troops in military bases and facilities managed by the French.”
Others include: “(7) According to the colonization agreement, these countries are subject to the obligation to make French the official language of the country and the language of instruction. (8) According to the agreement, these countries are also obliged to use the CFA Franc. (9) Again, according to the agreement, these countries, in the event of a global war or crisis that may arise, have to ally with France.” Two additional terms which Mawuna Koutonin had mentioned on 28 January, 2014 in an article in Silicon Africa.com titled, “14 African countries forced by France to pay colonial tax for the benefits of slavery and colonization,” are (10) “Renunciation to enter into military alliance with any other country unless authorized by France” and (11) “Obligation to send France annual balance and reserve report, [and] without the report, [the defaulting country would have] no money.”
Boubacar Boris Diop further notes: “To be frank, the meek silence of Francophone African intellectuals is the main reason why French public opinion thinks there is nothing wrong with Françafrique.” He also states: “There are many signs that the situation is changing. France is no longer the great world power she used to be three decades ago, when Paris could easily topple an African head of state without too much fuss. Now, she needs the ‘approval’ of the UN – and the money – to do so. Moreover, most of the new African leaders were born after these strange ‘independences’ their fathers threw so cowardly to the dogs. Even though many of these young presidents still have a slave mentality vis-à-vis Paris, some of them refuse to act as its obedient lackeys. Ironically, these ‘resisters’ are the ones who will, at last, decolonise France, a country still haunted by its colonial past – tragicomically at times.”
In a conversation with students and alumni of the University of South Africa, on Africa Web TV on 13 March, 2024, Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, gave the details of one of the agreements as follows: “I think we’ve got to understand this about the West Africa situation. A few years back, you remember we had to work with Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), to help them to get sorted out. One of the things we found was that there was an agreement with France signed at the point of the independence of Cote D’Ivoire that France would maintain a military barrack in Abidjan, the capital, and the Commander of the French troops, in any situation where he felt the security of Cote D’Ivoire or the security of France was threatened, he had the power, the sovereign power, a French General, to take over the public station broadcasting and announce whatever he liked. It’s one of the twelve or so agreements that not only Cote D’Ivoire but many Francophone countries signed with France at independence. Mali has just repudiated all of those agreements.”
President Mbeki continued: “Part of what is happening in West Africa is a rebellion by young officers against French neo-colonialism. It’s not only military coups to remove some elected president, but these young soldiers are saying ‘Our politics since independence has respected this junior relationship with France that must end. … It’s an anti-neo-colonial rebellion.’”
And by the way, Adem Kiliç recalls the cruel antecedents of today’s debilitating exploitation of the continent and the victims’ resistance efforts: “The influence of the Western countries on Africa was the result of a bloody process and completely based on obtaining the resources of the region. There were violent conflicts and wars with the indigenous peoples who resisted the influence of the West in the African Continent. Indigenous peoples who resisted were violently and bloodily neutralized. The enthusiasm of the West to obtain resources on land and above ground in the beginning has evolved into another dimension with the determination of precious metals and strategic mines in the future.” That future is here.
With France steadily losing its stranglehold on its former colonies and an uncertain diplomatic and economic future in West Africa lying ahead of the country, it seems as if France is now courting other countries, especially Nigeria. But Nigeria’s experience with France hasn’t been particularly reassuring. During the Nigerian Civil war (1967 to 1970), France supported and supplied arms to the Biafran side. Two of the motives some experts gave for the French actions were to control the oil resources of Biafra and to weaken and reduce Nigeria’s influence on French-speaking West African states. Given these and other antecedents, Nigeria needs to be quite cautious in the new relationship with France, and regularly ask the question, “Can the leopard change its spots?”
It’s a credit to Ambassador Arikana Chihombori-Quao’s profundity, foresight and tenacity that elements of the post-coup speeches and policies of current soldiers who ousted their pro-France governments, and even those of some democratically-elected ones, in West Africa sound like pages from Dr. Chihombori-Quao’s playbook. For example, the Alliance of Sahel States (French: ‘Alliance des États du Sahel [AES]’) has been established to get the benefits of unity, a common liberationist theme in Chihombori-Quao’s counsel, in order to enjoy the benefits of common vision and common action and ensure the stability and the enhancement of the sovereignty of the uniting countries. Moreover, the countries, including democratically-governed ones like Senegal and Cote D’Ivoire, have asked French troops to leave.