On Wednesday last week, a new Gabonese military junta installed itself, having ousted President Ali Bongo, whose family have ruled the country since 1967. Just two days earlier, the French President Emmanuel Macron gave a speech to his ambassadors in which he spoke of an ‘epidemic of putschs’ in what was formerly France’s greatest sphere of post-colonial influence.
Although most of these states have been independent for decades, Paris kept them firmly in the French orbit
There have now been six coups d’état in francophone sub-Saharan Africa in three years – Mali, Chad, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger and now the small but wealthy nation of Gabon. France’s whole African policy is on the skids and there will be trepidation in other presidential palaces, such as those of 90-year-old Paul Biya in Cameroon and 79-year-old Denis Sassou Nguesso in Congo.
What Macron did not say was that a common feature of most of these overthrows has been anti-French sentiment.
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