Francafrique is dead, declared French President Francois Hollande shortly after taking office last year. This was a momentous statement. Hollande's predecessors, without exception, revelled in the cosy, corrupt relationship between France and some of Africa's most unstable democracies and worst dictatorships. They pulled those colonial strings for all they were worth, and they were worth plenty to French companies looking for mineral rights in the Central African Republic or French car salesmen with another Ferrari to sell to Teodoro Obiang Junior.
The man whom Hollande succeeded, Nicolas Sarkozy, was a particularly enthusiastic, if not always expert, exponent of Francafrique ("Is that a brown envelope full of cash in your robe, Monsieur Gaddafi, or am I just happy to see you?").And when things didn't go his way in Africa, he wasn't afraid to force the matter, in 2011 authorising both the intervention by French special forces in Cote D'Ivoire and the bombing campaign in Libya.But Hollande, according to the man himself, would be different. "I now want to express to you my determination to update the relationship between France and Africa," he told Senegal's National Assembly in Dakar in October. "The age of what was once called 'Franafrique' is over. There's France and there's Africa. There's the partnership between France and Africa, with relations based on respect, clarity and solidarity."
