French neocolonialism, the presence of French companies in Africa and the rising of emerging powers
Felipe Antonio Honorato
Abstract: this article examines how French companies have helped and benefited from France’s neocolonial policies in Africa. Also, it looks into how French interests and French business are reacting to both the growing economic presence of emerging powers and the political and popular pressure against them in the African continent.
To Mbuyi Kabunda Badi (2012), France is the most active of the former colonial powers in Africa. The country acts “directly or indirectly through informal and parallel networks (political, military and economic actors), and private actors” (Badi, 2012, p. 88) on the continent, defending its interests, regardless of the political orientation of the ruling party in Paris. According to the Congolese author, this is due to the French ambition to maintain its status as a great power, and the country even tends to fill vacuums of influence left by other former colonial metropolises that are no longer too active in Africa (Badi, 2012).
The Francophone sphere of influence represented a protected space for French companies to operate, especially during the first decades after the African independences (1960, 1970) (Barriviera, 2019). As late as 1991, Africa was France’s third largest export market after North America and Europe; this commerce was sustained by a series of bilateral trade deals and a common currency arrangement (Gibbs, 2024).
Jacques Foccart, one of the fathers of France’s African policy and known as “Mr. Africa”, built himself much of his wealth accrued from his import–export agency, Safiex, which sold finished goods into the former colonies while picking up raw materials at low prices (Gibbs, 2024).
France is highly dependent on the imports of certain minerals that are vital to its industries. According to statistics from the early 1980s, France’s dependence on mineral imports from Africa ranged from 100% for uranium (Gabon, Niger) to 90% for bauxite (Guinea), 76% for manganese (Gabon, South Africa), 59% for cobalt (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia), 57% for copper (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia), 56% for chromium (Madagascar, South Africa), 55% for phosphate (Morocco, Togo) and 31% for iron ore (Liberia, Mauritania) (Martin, 1995).
In the energy sector, dependence increased from 30% in 1950 to 80% in 1988–9. In 1995, almost 70% of the oil extracted worldwide by Elf-Aquitaine (now Total, after its privatization) came from deposits it explored in Africa (Angola, Cameroon, Republic of Congo and Gabon) (Martin, 1995).
In many African contexts, French private companies were indispensable to the European state ‘s strategy; the case of nuclear energy is perhaps the most emblematic one. France is the world ‘s largest exporter of electricity (Penna Filho; Badou, 2014); 80% of the electricity produced there comes from nuclear power plants, and the country used to be dependent on uranium from Niger (Taylor, 2019).
In Niger, the French company AREVA S/A operated for over 50 years and exploited important mines of uranium. Thus, political stability in the African country and the maintenance in power of a group favorable to the French interests were vital for the European nation. By 2014, France did not yet have a substitute for the uranium supplied by Niger (Penna Filho; Badou, 2014).
There are more than a thousand French companies and corporations operating in Africa, in addition to more than two thousand subsidiaries (Medushevsky; Shishkina, 2022). Some of them played a clear role in conflicts or coups d’état in sub-Saharan Africa over the last 60 years. This is the case of Total, which was involved in selling weapons to both sides in the Angolan civil war (1975–2002) (Badi, 2012).
Many cooperation and defense agreements signed within the Francophonie contain special clauses that guarantee to France exclusive access to strategic raw materials such as oil, natural gas, uranium, thorium, lithium, beryllium and helium. These commodities must be sold primarily to the European country as required by “common defense interests” (Martin, 1995).
Currently, economic ties between Francophone Africa and countries such as China, India, South Africa, Russia, Turkey and Germany prevail. Chinese companies now have a 25% market share in French-speaking Africa, while French exports decreased from 11% to 5.5% between 2000 and 2018; in some specific nations the drop is greater, as is the case of Senegal, where the French share reached 2.5% (Medushevsky; Shishkina, 2022; Thiam, 2025).
France has also lost its role as the main investor in the region. In 2016, the volume of French direct investment in the economies of Francophone Africa was 7.7 billion euros, placing the country in sixth place (Medushevsky; Shishkina, 2022).
To illustrate the situation: an article published on November 4, 2006, in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo highlighted how the Chinese telephone operator Congo-China (CCT) had gained a significant share of the mobile phone market in the Democratic Republic of Congo with its “unparalleled” mobile phone rates, and how concessions to Chinese companies had proliferated in the Congolese province of Katanga over the decades (Bernard, 2006).
The growing economic presence of emerging powers on the continent is, however, ambiguous for French interests. French business sectors with a large presence in Africa, such as telecommunications, port operations, air and rail transport, directly benefit from the presence of these emerging powers due to the volume of business and services they provide. Other sectors, such as construction and the automotive industry, are negatively impacted by the presence of these emerging powers, which are able to be more competitive and offer lower prices than those offered by French companies (Barriviera, 2019).
Besides the increasing presence of emerging powers in Africa, France’s policy for the continent is under massive political and popular pressure — i.e.: the slogan “France Dégage!” (“France, get out!”) became a popular social media meme in West Africa. This situation is openly challenging Paris’ military, diplomatic and economic footprint in Africa (Thiam, 2025; Gibbs, 2024). One of the biggest examples of this is the case of the already cited ARENA.
Once the leading producer of uranium in Niger, ARENA was restructured in 2017 due to financial difficulties. One of the companies that emerged from this restructuring, Orano, announced in September 2024 that it would suspend production at its Arlit uranium mine in northern Niger. The decision came as border closures between Niger and Benin, triggered by the July 2023 coup, had blocked all uranium exports, Orano said in a statement, adding: “In spite of efforts to find alternative possibilities to export the uranium produced by Somair and to relaunch commercial activities, all the proposals made to the Nigerien authorities have remained unanswered” (Thiam, 2025).
In June 2024, Orano also lost its mining license for the Imouraren uranium deposit due to a decision by the military government, which revoked the license following a period of tensions and ultimatum. The mine holds one of the world’s largest uranium deposits (Thiam, 2025).
Due to the political and popular pressure, a strategy is becoming clearer for French companies operating in Africa: maintain a presence, but through more indirect means. They now seek to maintain market share without provoking rejection by launching joint ventures, local partnerships or the creation of project companies under local law (Thiam, 2025).
In any case, French influence remains extremely strong, and it is the country that regulates policies in its controlled area. This is largely due to its deeply rooted economic ties with Africa, which are extremely difficult to completely break. For example: French foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa grew tenfold from 2000 to 2017, and is now in third place, after the United Kingdom and the USA. Of the total French FDI applied to the continent, 30% goes to North Africa (20% of which goes to Morocco) (Medushevsky; Shishkina, 2022).
It is also necessary to observe that, among other factors, globalization is challenging for France because it threatens the country’s international projection; this is because this process decreed the end of the ideologically oriented US foreign policy aimed at containing the USSR and reinforced the international projection of the United States, taking away space from the French. In this sense, the country has sought less projection individually, and more through the European Union, consolidating itself as one of the leaders of the group (Barriviera, 2019). Counting development assistance to Africa in one fashion, China emerges as the largest investor in almost every African country today. But if one pools the investments of individual European countries into a common EU account, then Brussels is the most important investor on the continent (Gibbs, 2024).
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About the Author
Felipe Antonio Honorato (Brazil): PhD in Social Change and Political Participation by the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Honorato is currently a professor in the Postgraduate Program in African Studies and Representations of Africa (PPGEARA — Universidade do Estado da Bahia, Brazil) and a Postdoctoral researcher in Universidade Estadual do Centro Oeste (Brazil).
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