Françafrique
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Françafrique is a term that refers to France's relationship with Africa. It was first used by president of the Côte d'Ivoire Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who appears to have used it in a positive sense, to refer to good relations between France and Africa, but it was subsequently borrowed by François-Xavier Verschave as the title of his criticism of French policies in Africa: La Françafrique, le plus long scandale de la République (ISBN 2234049482).
Verschave later defined Françafrique as "the secret criminality in the upper echelons of French politics and economy, where a kind of underground Republic is hidden from view". He said that it also means "France à fric" (fric is a slang word for "cash"), and that "Over the course of four decades, hundreds of thousands of euros misappropriated from debt, aid, oil, cocoa... or drained through French importing monopolies, have financed French political-business networks (all of them offshoots of the main neo-Gaullist network), shareholders’ dividends, the secret services’ major operations and mercenary expeditions."[1]
Jacques Foccart, who from 1960 was chief of staff for African matters for president Charles de Gaulle (1958–69) and then Georges Pompidou (1969-1974), was claimed to be the one of the leading exponents of Françafrique.
The term Françafrique continues to be used, in 2008, in discussions about relations between France and its former African colonies. In response to a question from a journalist from Le Monde, the current French Secretary of State for Overseas Development, Jean-Marie Bockel, said that he wants to "sign the death certificate of Françafrique". [2]
[edit] References
[edit] See also
- Bob Denard, a French mercenary
