France and China Face Different Emerging Challenges in Africa

Opposite responses from Paris and Beijing to last week's Mali coup underscore the risks China accepted in the last decade to supplant France as "most-favored" superpower in West Africa and gain access to minerals, chemicals and metals that drive econ and military.

With the exception of Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria, France has been part of the West African community for >100yrs spreading the lingua franca from Dakar to N'Djamena and creating economies supported by the French Franc which has proven valuable in post-colonial Africa.

Beijing underappreciated the bonds that had developed between Paris and many West African countries following the end of colonialism which included programs to assist members of former French colonies to apply for French citizenship.

Chinese President Xi Jinping didn't hesitate to follow previous examples of Chinese intervention in other parts of Africa by assuming that every govt would be directly influenced by cash and feel-good projects including pipelines and highway construction.

In Burkina Faso, for example, the funding of the Textile Industry was a way of co-opting the local press and providing jobs. As hordes of Chinese govt engineers and metallurgists started plotting out GPS locations xenophobia reared its ugly head

Unfortunately for Xi, the local Burkinabe did not respond well to the influx of Chinese construction workers and various support staff. The Burkinabe place a great deal of import on courtesy and friendliness while the Chinese working abroad tend to keep to themselves which increased local unease.

Just as the Chinese began to address this problem with culture and language instruction for its in-country employees,SARSCov-2 arrived 💥💥💥

The media in Niamey, Abidjan, Dakar, Bamako and Ouagadougou, always on the lookout for western abuses of African resources, followed AFP, Le Figaro and Le Monde in placing at least a part of the blame for the virus on Wuhan lab and the CCP.

Counterintuitively, however, last week's coup in Bamako may provide Xi a bit of breathing room, as Beijing formulates a new policy to retain hard-earned and expensive access to the priceless resources in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

So far, Beijing has followed the UN/international line which makes perfect sense as it's essential for the Bamako interim government to keep control and provide the Chinese some level of security for the billions invested

👉as more than just Mali is at stake in W Africa