10 ms·

African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax

67 points by vinnyglennon 12y ago

saikaisi 12y ago
This is really Horrible. Probably, why 80% of the 10 countries with the lowest literacy rates in the WORLD among adults are in francophone Africa. Namely: Benin (40%), Burkina Faso (26%), Chad (34%), Côte d’Ivoire (49%), Guinea (29%), Mali (23%), Niger (29%), and Senegal (42%).
- pavlov 12y ago
  That sounds simplified. Mali, Chad and Niger are inland desert countries whose enormous total land area consists mostly of Sahara. They would still be desperately poor even if their official language were English, Dutch or Danish instead of French. Conversely we could look at African countries that haven't had to suffer meddling from a colonial parent, and they don't seem to be much better off. Liberia has been independent for a long time. The Democratic Republic of Congo doesn't suffer from Belgian military interventions. Neither is a paradise.
  - saikaisi 12y ago
    and curiously only Francophone Africa is more impacted by colonial meddling ...
  - jacques_foccart 12y ago
    Takes some balls to put forward the DRC as an example of an untouched country. Let's see: Tshombe's plane was hijacked and he was jailed in Algeria just as the French-backed "mercenaries" (including, allegedly, Bob Denard) were about to take the place over from the American-backed Mobutu. Che Guevara and a few hundred Cubans on one side, people like "Mad Mike" Hoare on the other (not American, but...). Talking of Belgian military intervention, ever head of Jean Schramme?
    - pavlov 12y ago
      Point taken, that was very poor phrasing on my part. I meant that Belgium doesn't engage in France-style interventions in Africa anymore.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    Ethiopia fought off Italy, had some really bad times, but is doing well now. They actually had something like a state with which to fight off European aggression. The French really were terrible at colonial administration. They had a way of letting emotions guide their decision-making and no compunctions whatsoever about asserting how morally superior they were to the locals. This led to truly horrific massacres on both sides, that continued until very recently, where most of the rest of the post-colonial world had largely moved on. You see the remnants of that colonial legacy in the French attitude towards African and Islamic immigrants. As bad as classism gets in the US, it only rarely provokes violence. French civil unrest is often terrifying, as the Charlie Hebdo massacre has shown. That was actually tame compared to a lot of what happened in Algeria. There are deep, raw, and gaping wounds that will probably never be healed. The old generation will just die off and the younger generation are, due to French apathy, falling under the spell of Islamism.
    - jacques_foccart 12y ago
      It is amusing to note that Ethiopia's victory against the Italians was in (some say, large) part due to a Brit. Cf the Gideon Force.
finid 12y ago
> We often accuse African leaders of corruption and serving western nations interests instead, but there is a clear explanation for that behavior. They behave so because they are afraid the be killed or victim of a coup. They want a powerful nation to back them in case of aggression or trouble. But, contrary to a friendly nation protection, the western protection is often offered in exchange of these leaders renouncing to serve their own people or nations’ interests. The same arrangement prevails between the defenders democracy and smaller countries that can't defend themselves against Big Brothers. Why do you think Uncle Sam chose to invade Iraq when the House of Saud is the real evil in the ME?
- toyg 12y ago
  The choice of Iraq over Saudi as Great Enemy has little to do with size or power; back before the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq wasn't a poor country. In fact, if Saddam hadn't misread US responses when he hinted at the possibility of taking over Kuwait, he would probably still be in charge and I bet he'd have developed a great friendship with King Abdallah by now. The Saudis are safe because they will "do the right thing" when the chips are down -- see for example their recent refusal to cut oil production: there is a drunk Russian bear to quiet down, prices have to stay low to make him feel pain, so the Saudi Kingdom will make the "right" choice even if it costs them some cash. That's what a reliable partner does, and as long as partners remain reliable (and strategically irreplaceable), there is no reason to take them out.
  - finid 12y ago
    In other words all that noise about "our values" is just hot air. Btw, if by "a drunk Russian bear" you 're referring to Putin, the guy does not dring, or at least, he does not get drunk, unlike most Russian men of his age. That's one reason Russian women like him.
    - toyg 12y ago
      "Drunk" was a joke playing on Russian stereotypes in the West and on the expression "drunk with power" (the Russian military is currently making a spectacle of itself all over Scandinavia and the Baltic, not to mention the little issue of Crimea).
haliou 12y ago
My first post on HN :) I'm not sure the situation is a simple as the author implies. It is true that when the French left Guinea in 1958 they took everything with them. Eventually Guinea turned to communist Russia with even greater consequences. The author claims "Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene military in the country to defend its interests". This is not true as it's a defence agreement against external aggression, not internal civil war. For example they did not intervene for any side during the 2002-2004 civil war in the Ivory Coast. The usage of Franc CFA is actually beneficial to those using the currency as it's value is pegged to the Euro, hence helping to control inflation. I do not dispute the facts that Africans countries ought to be more autonomous (after all that's what independence is), but this stems more from a failure from Africans politicians than anyone else.
- saikaisi 12y ago
  >"For example they did not intervene for any side during the 2002-2004 civil war in the Ivory Coast." That's no true. France supported Alassane Ouatarra, the current president who lost the election, but was backed by France which troops fired on people on the street and also bombarded with helicopters the presidential palace to force the elected president Laurent Gbagbo to give power to Alassance Ouattara supported by France. Links are all over the net to prove that. The fact and history behind the CFA is much more dark, than presented. I agree with you, Africans should fight the French to become more autonomous.
  - haliou 12y ago
    You are mixing the facts. I stated the 2002-2004 war. The election were held in 2010. During the civil war[1] 2002-2007 The country was divided in two with the French military separating both side, the French were authorized to act by UN resolution 1528 (very important!) The elections were held in October 2010, the counting took months and the Electoral commission declared Alassane Ouatarra the winner in December 2010. Laurent Gbagbo refused to stand down, claiming he won. Thus the 2nd civil war began[2]. The stand off continued until April 2011 when the rebel took control of the country including Abidjan and with the help of the French removed Gbagbo. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ivorian_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ivorian_Civil_War [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ivorian_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ivorian_Civil_War
jacques_foccart 12y ago
Another foreigner discovers the wonders of Francafrique, but he gets the mechanism wrong. Although trying to study the place from third party sources is like watching Rashomon, this is pretty much how it works: - "friendly" dictator is installed and maintained so long as he cooperates. - aid packages are sent over (in cash, by plane) and loans made with friendly zero interest - money flies straight back via Geneva to finance French parties (e.g. RPR and Chirac, but also Mitterrand whose network was a subset of Pasqua's, ironically; who knows who is in charge these days) - country is maintained in poverty by any means practical (rigged election equipment with magical 90%+ wins, flying in 1,000 soldiers into Congo from Chad, shipping weapons by the crate...) so as to lower the cost of keeping it under control. This includes financing both sides of a war (as in Angola), and the "black governors" as some call them deliberately installing the rule of corruption from top to bottom (see Mobutu for the best example). The loans and missing aid definitely help keep the finances problematic, especially when they cause future resource production to be promised away for years as collateral. It's important to note that Francafrique has been internationalised; FX Verschave, who despite being almost a communist has been very good at keeping track of the whole thing thinks the French networks have become subsets of the US ones. Cuba, Russia were also big players on the chessboard. As for the targets the saying is the louder they complain about the West, the closer they are. Omar Bongo was hand-chosen by De Gaulle (cf Foccart's memoirs) and trained and educated in France. He was the most reliable and famous, so close to the French government he arbitrated disputes between ministers. You basically hear two sides of the story: - "communists are trying to take over the place and we must stop them and forget human rights for a while whilst we do so" (CIA, Rhodesians, South Africans back in the days) - "the Western capitalist powers will do anything to conquer their colonies and keep them in control, but we're the democratic choice" (Madagascar, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the aforementioned left wing countries). Some of the claims are pretty bold, for example aforementioned Verschave claims the left wing Mitterrand made Le Pen's political career happen (from 0.4 to 10% of the vote) in exchange for maintaining a nice vivier of far-right youth that could be relied on for African "holidays" and the occasional false flag car burning in Algerian-French banlieues. I don't think either side is right of course but you can glimpse crumbs of truth from each side, and occasionally pockets of data emerge as the various powers take the fight to the press and public temporarily, or some Don Quixote decides to try her hand at windmills like Eva Joly against Elf (cf "Poisoned Wells" which is a nice taster to the place). I look forward to reading the declassified intelligence documents in 70 years or whatever it is. Mercenary accounts can be pretty entertaining too - I'll close with Simon Mann's quote about the French DGSE and military intelligence, "whatever you do, we can do dirtier".
alain94040 12y ago
That articles looks bogus. For instance: It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France, that's pretty much equivalent to the budget of the French government. If that number were true, France finances ought to be in better shape.
- jacques_foccart 12y ago
  The money does not appear on official counts, it mostly sits in offshore accounts and structures. Cf the Clearstream affair.
  - jacques_foccart 12y ago
    Interesting that this got 4 downvotes (6, since it had 2 upvotes before everything in the thread started going down - by far the most downvoted of all my posts!). This comment is a bit pointless since the thread has been flag-killed, anyway. Clearstream (1, not 2) is the one case where we DO have evidence, thanks to lengthy and numerous lawsuits and plenty of publicly available documents, including some taken from the safes of the companies involved. As a French citizen, I used to be somewhat adamant that there was no way my government was ever capable of doing Bad Things, a few hundred books later and exposure to the people in these groups (including working for an Elf-like company, and family in management in Total), I think differently.
    - saikaisi 12y ago
      The same happened to all my replies on this post. it Seems like a french cyberteam crushed all debate with flagging, down voting and scripted attacks. Where is the defense of freedom of speech beloved by #ImCharlie folks?
- saikaisi 12y ago
  the 500 billions is the compounded amount over 50 or 60 years, as I understand
pc2g4d 12y ago
Doesn't the legend on the map translate as "UN and African Union Missions" ? That's not the same as the English text, which describes that map as "French military bases in Africa".
- omarali 12y ago
  Look at the top right, it says "French presences".
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
> if French is the only language you speak, you’d have access to less than 4% of humanity knowledge and ideas Any relevant piece of knowledge is already available in French. I understand the author's dislike of everything french, but this is going too far.
tokenadult 12y ago
I see that several comments here doubt that the factual statements in the submitted article are true. That's something to think about before deciding how to respond to the article being posted here. My comment on the substance of the article is that one way to reality-check French colonial policies in Africa is to see whether African countries that had a different history during the period of Western colonialism on the continent fared differently in recent decades. Ethiopia was an independent country except for a brief period of being conquered by Italy in the 1930s, becoming liberated again during World War II. Liberia was formally independent, although bound to the United States by economic ties as it was founded as a repatriation site for freed slaves from America. Various countries in Africa were British or Belgian or Portuguese or even (briefly) German colonies before gaining independence. Looking at what former colonies of a particular colonizing country have in common might shed a little light on what the varying colonial policies and post-colonial policies have done in Africa.
deodorel 12y ago
The problem might be that, during most of history, The majority of African groups either didn't have enough resources in order to accumulate enough wealth to afford working organized structures/states or were too fragmented. Most European states were also plundered countless times but the lands are richer so they were able to recoup. The French have a complicated history with franceafrique but you can say the same thing with any great power at some moment in time.

67 points by vinnyglennon 12y ago

This is really Horrible. Probably, why 80% of the 10 countries with the lowest literacy rates in the WORLD among adults are in francophone Africa. Namely: Benin (40%), Burkina Faso (26%), Chad (34%), Côte d’Ivoire (49%), Guinea (29%), Mali (23%), Niger (29%), and Senegal (42%).

pavlov 12y ago
That sounds simplified. Mali, Chad and Niger are inland desert countries whose enormous total land area consists mostly of Sahara. They would still be desperately poor even if their official language were English, Dutch or Danish instead of French. Conversely we could look at African countries that haven't had to suffer meddling from a colonial parent, and they don't seem to be much better off. Liberia has been independent for a long time. The Democratic Republic of Congo doesn't suffer from Belgian military interventions. Neither is a paradise.
- saikaisi 12y ago
  and curiously only Francophone Africa is more impacted by colonial meddling ...
- jacques_foccart 12y ago
  Takes some balls to put forward the DRC as an example of an untouched country. Let's see: Tshombe's plane was hijacked and he was jailed in Algeria just as the French-backed "mercenaries" (including, allegedly, Bob Denard) were about to take the place over from the American-backed Mobutu. Che Guevara and a few hundred Cubans on one side, people like "Mad Mike" Hoare on the other (not American, but...). Talking of Belgian military intervention, ever head of Jean Schramme?
  - pavlov 12y ago
    Point taken, that was very poor phrasing on my part. I meant that Belgium doesn't engage in France-style interventions in Africa anymore.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  Ethiopia fought off Italy, had some really bad times, but is doing well now. They actually had something like a state with which to fight off European aggression. The French really were terrible at colonial administration. They had a way of letting emotions guide their decision-making and no compunctions whatsoever about asserting how morally superior they were to the locals. This led to truly horrific massacres on both sides, that continued until very recently, where most of the rest of the post-colonial world had largely moved on. You see the remnants of that colonial legacy in the French attitude towards African and Islamic immigrants. As bad as classism gets in the US, it only rarely provokes violence. French civil unrest is often terrifying, as the Charlie Hebdo massacre has shown. That was actually tame compared to a lot of what happened in Algeria. There are deep, raw, and gaping wounds that will probably never be healed. The old generation will just die off and the younger generation are, due to French apathy, falling under the spell of Islamism.
  - jacques_foccart 12y ago
    It is amusing to note that Ethiopia's victory against the Italians was in (some say, large) part due to a Brit. Cf the Gideon Force.

finid 12y ago

> We often accuse African leaders of corruption and serving western nations interests instead, but there is a clear explanation for that behavior. They behave so because they are afraid the be killed or victim of a coup. They want a powerful nation to back them in case of aggression or trouble. But, contrary to a friendly nation protection, the western protection is often offered in exchange of these leaders renouncing to serve their own people or nations’ interests. The same arrangement prevails between the defenders democracy and smaller countries that can't defend themselves against Big Brothers. Why do you think Uncle Sam chose to invade Iraq when the House of Saud is the real evil in the ME?

toyg 12y ago
The choice of Iraq over Saudi as Great Enemy has little to do with size or power; back before the Iraq-Iran war, Iraq wasn't a poor country. In fact, if Saddam hadn't misread US responses when he hinted at the possibility of taking over Kuwait, he would probably still be in charge and I bet he'd have developed a great friendship with King Abdallah by now. The Saudis are safe because they will "do the right thing" when the chips are down -- see for example their recent refusal to cut oil production: there is a drunk Russian bear to quiet down, prices have to stay low to make him feel pain, so the Saudi Kingdom will make the "right" choice even if it costs them some cash. That's what a reliable partner does, and as long as partners remain reliable (and strategically irreplaceable), there is no reason to take them out.
- finid 12y ago
  In other words all that noise about "our values" is just hot air. Btw, if by "a drunk Russian bear" you 're referring to Putin, the guy does not dring, or at least, he does not get drunk, unlike most Russian men of his age. That's one reason Russian women like him.
  - toyg 12y ago
    "Drunk" was a joke playing on Russian stereotypes in the West and on the expression "drunk with power" (the Russian military is currently making a spectacle of itself all over Scandinavia and the Baltic, not to mention the little issue of Crimea).

haliou 12y ago

My first post on HN :) I'm not sure the situation is a simple as the author implies. It is true that when the French left Guinea in 1958 they took everything with them. Eventually Guinea turned to communist Russia with even greater consequences. The author claims "Right for France to pre-deploy troops and intervene military in the country to defend its interests". This is not true as it's a defence agreement against external aggression, not internal civil war. For example they did not intervene for any side during the 2002-2004 civil war in the Ivory Coast. The usage of Franc CFA is actually beneficial to those using the currency as it's value is pegged to the Euro, hence helping to control inflation. I do not dispute the facts that Africans countries ought to be more autonomous (after all that's what independence is), but this stems more from a failure from Africans politicians than anyone else.

saikaisi 12y ago
>"For example they did not intervene for any side during the 2002-2004 civil war in the Ivory Coast." That's no true. France supported Alassane Ouatarra, the current president who lost the election, but was backed by France which troops fired on people on the street and also bombarded with helicopters the presidential palace to force the elected president Laurent Gbagbo to give power to Alassance Ouattara supported by France. Links are all over the net to prove that. The fact and history behind the CFA is much more dark, than presented. I agree with you, Africans should fight the French to become more autonomous.
- haliou 12y ago
  You are mixing the facts. I stated the 2002-2004 war. The election were held in 2010. During the civil war[1] 2002-2007 The country was divided in two with the French military separating both side, the French were authorized to act by UN resolution 1528 (very important!) The elections were held in October 2010, the counting took months and the Electoral commission declared Alassane Ouatarra the winner in December 2010. Laurent Gbagbo refused to stand down, claiming he won. Thus the 2nd civil war began[2]. The stand off continued until April 2011 when the rebel took control of the country including Abidjan and with the help of the French removed Gbagbo. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ivorian_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Ivorian_Civil_War [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ivorian_Civil_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Ivorian_Civil_War

jacques_foccart 12y ago

Another foreigner discovers the wonders of Francafrique, but he gets the mechanism wrong. Although trying to study the place from third party sources is like watching Rashomon, this is pretty much how it works: - "friendly" dictator is installed and maintained so long as he cooperates. - aid packages are sent over (in cash, by plane) and loans made with friendly zero interest - money flies straight back via Geneva to finance French parties (e.g. RPR and Chirac, but also Mitterrand whose network was a subset of Pasqua's, ironically; who knows who is in charge these days) - country is maintained in poverty by any means practical (rigged election equipment with magical 90%+ wins, flying in 1,000 soldiers into Congo from Chad, shipping weapons by the crate...) so as to lower the cost of keeping it under control. This includes financing both sides of a war (as in Angola), and the "black governors" as some call them deliberately installing the rule of corruption from top to bottom (see Mobutu for the best example). The loans and missing aid definitely help keep the finances problematic, especially when they cause future resource production to be promised away for years as collateral. It's important to note that Francafrique has been internationalised; FX Verschave, who despite being almost a communist has been very good at keeping track of the whole thing thinks the French networks have become subsets of the US ones. Cuba, Russia were also big players on the chessboard. As for the targets the saying is the louder they complain about the West, the closer they are. Omar Bongo was hand-chosen by De Gaulle (cf Foccart's memoirs) and trained and educated in France. He was the most reliable and famous, so close to the French government he arbitrated disputes between ministers. You basically hear two sides of the story: - "communists are trying to take over the place and we must stop them and forget human rights for a while whilst we do so" (CIA, Rhodesians, South Africans back in the days) - "the Western capitalist powers will do anything to conquer their colonies and keep them in control, but we're the democratic choice" (Madagascar, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the aforementioned left wing countries). Some of the claims are pretty bold, for example aforementioned Verschave claims the left wing Mitterrand made Le Pen's political career happen (from 0.4 to 10% of the vote) in exchange for maintaining a nice vivier of far-right youth that could be relied on for African "holidays" and the occasional false flag car burning in Algerian-French banlieues. I don't think either side is right of course but you can glimpse crumbs of truth from each side, and occasionally pockets of data emerge as the various powers take the fight to the press and public temporarily, or some Don Quixote decides to try her hand at windmills like Eva Joly against Elf (cf "Poisoned Wells" which is a nice taster to the place). I look forward to reading the declassified intelligence documents in 70 years or whatever it is. Mercenary accounts can be pretty entertaining too - I'll close with Simon Mann's quote about the French DGSE and military intelligence, "whatever you do, we can do dirtier".

alain94040 12y ago

That articles looks bogus. For instance: It’s such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_France, that's pretty much equivalent to the budget of the French government. If that number were true, France finances ought to be in better shape.

jacques_foccart 12y ago
The money does not appear on official counts, it mostly sits in offshore accounts and structures. Cf the Clearstream affair.
- jacques_foccart 12y ago
  Interesting that this got 4 downvotes (6, since it had 2 upvotes before everything in the thread started going down - by far the most downvoted of all my posts!). This comment is a bit pointless since the thread has been flag-killed, anyway. Clearstream (1, not 2) is the one case where we DO have evidence, thanks to lengthy and numerous lawsuits and plenty of publicly available documents, including some taken from the safes of the companies involved. As a French citizen, I used to be somewhat adamant that there was no way my government was ever capable of doing Bad Things, a few hundred books later and exposure to the people in these groups (including working for an Elf-like company, and family in management in Total), I think differently.
  - saikaisi 12y ago
    The same happened to all my replies on this post. it Seems like a french cyberteam crushed all debate with flagging, down voting and scripted attacks. Where is the defense of freedom of speech beloved by #ImCharlie folks?
saikaisi 12y ago
the 500 billions is the compounded amount over 50 or 60 years, as I understand

pc2g4d 12y ago

Doesn't the legend on the map translate as "UN and African Union Missions" ? That's not the same as the English text, which describes that map as "French military bases in Africa".

omarali 12y ago
Look at the top right, it says "French presences".

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

> if French is the only language you speak, you’d have access to less than 4% of humanity knowledge and ideas Any relevant piece of knowledge is already available in French. I understand the author's dislike of everything french, but this is going too far.

tokenadult 12y ago

I see that several comments here doubt that the factual statements in the submitted article are true. That's something to think about before deciding how to respond to the article being posted here. My comment on the substance of the article is that one way to reality-check French colonial policies in Africa is to see whether African countries that had a different history during the period of Western colonialism on the continent fared differently in recent decades. Ethiopia was an independent country except for a brief period of being conquered by Italy in the 1930s, becoming liberated again during World War II. Liberia was formally independent, although bound to the United States by economic ties as it was founded as a repatriation site for freed slaves from America. Various countries in Africa were British or Belgian or Portuguese or even (briefly) German colonies before gaining independence. Looking at what former colonies of a particular colonizing country have in common might shed a little light on what the varying colonial policies and post-colonial policies have done in Africa.

deodorel 12y ago

The problem might be that, during most of history, The majority of African groups either didn't have enough resources in order to accumulate enough wealth to afford working organized structures/states or were too fragmented. Most European states were also plundered countless times but the lands are richer so they were able to recoup. The French have a complicated history with franceafrique but you can say the same thing with any great power at some moment in time.