Decolonizing the French Colonial Pact: From Anticolonial Wars of Independence to Presidential Extensions

This chapter decolonizes the existing narrative on anticolonial nationalisms of independence in Africa and post-independence politics in selected African countries, to discuss and reflect on the French Colonial Pact. The chapter discusses colonial resistance and moves towards independence, including liberation movements, nationalist movements and their associated nationalist leaders. The discussion includes Kenya, Zimbabwe and Algeria which fought liberation wars, and francophone sub-Saharan Africa where there were no liberation wars. The discussions reveal different experiences for Algeria versus francophone sub-Sahara. The French Legion was based in Algeria for 130 years before the hard-fought 1954–1962 Algerian War of Independence brought their stationing to a close. Francophone sub-Saharan states did not fight wars for their independence but were made to pay that price by signing the French Colonial Pact which included bilateral defense and technical assistance agreements with France that allow for stationing French special forces and military facilities in these countries after independence. The pact continues to saddle these countries to date. Aptly put by the Harvard International Review, “the lack of a war separating colonial rule from statehood meant that many French systems set up to exploit their colonies remained in place”. The chapter further analyses the impacts of the agreements on post-independence politics, including systematic patterns of prolonged presidencies in eight countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Togo and Tunisia. The chapter concludes with Table 5.1, which has the full list of presidential extensions beyond term limits in Africa from November 1960 to March 2025, the latest tally being 38 extensions across 25 countries since the independence wave of the 1960s. The data in Table 5.1 and its related chart (Fig. 5.1) show that a significant majority (14 or 56%) of African states perpetrating the phenomenon of extended presidencies are francophone, perhaps because France itself was not practicing term limits until 2008 and therefore encouraged its former colonies along this path. More importantly, this system of prolonged presidencies kept the French puppets in power to facilitate the delivery of the French Colonial Pact. The question mark over francophone Africa being prone to conflict because of the pact and presidential extensions is illustrated by Fig. 5.2.