During his first visit to South Africa last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France intended to re-negotiate its defense agreements with Africa, a move widely seen as "a major shift" in his nation's policies toward Africa where France had been a key colonial power until the1960s.
Speaking at the South African parliament in Cape Town, Sarkozy said France would no longer play a "policing role" in Africa and would assist the continent to become a player in globalization.
"Defense agreements must reflect the Africa of today and not yesterday," he said.
"We are now in the 21st century as opposed to the 20th century. It is unthinkable that the French army should be drawn into domestic conflicts," said Sarkozy who was elected in May 2007.
Observers noted that this would mark a "major turning point" for France's sometimes controversial Africa policy.
Over the past decade, France's engagement with Africa is a defensive stance of seeking to protect her former spheres of historical and colonial influence, a policy carried out by Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterand.
Compared with his predecessors, Sarkozy is apparently more pragmatic in his Africa policy which seems to give more weight to economic and financial considerations, notably on searching for new markets.
In the military spheres, France still maintains over 9,000 troops in its former colonies, such as Djibouti, Senegal, Gabon, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and the Central African Republic.
France's "policing role" has been under increasing criticism from both African countries and the French public opinion. Some African statesmen criticized France's African policy as "neo-colonization."
"Times have changed and France has no call to play a policing role in Africa," said Sarkozy who vowed a "rupture" with the nation's traditional Africa policy in his presidential campaign.
"That is the role of the AU (African Union) and the regional African organizations," he said, adding that France would like to help the AU and those organizations "play a more active and decisive role in peacekeeping in Africa."
In a recent article in the French daily Le Figaro, Michael Cheylan, a French expert on Africa, said that with its influence on African issues diminishing, policy shift by France is mainly meant to keep a balance between "the cost and the risk."
The bigger roles of AU and EU would reduce France's burden on peacekeeping, development aid and political dialog, he noted.
French Defense Minister Herve Morin said France would continue to keep a military presence in Africa despite President Sarkozy's intentions to renegotiate all military cooperation pacts with countries on the continent.
"What we would like to see is more involvement from other European nations in the search for solutions to the challenges that are facing Africa," said the minister.
In short, Sarkozy hoped that France would appear neutral and detached on African affairs in the future and turn its stereotyped image of a protector to that of a friend, thus furthering its long-term strategic interests on the continent.
Source: Xinhua
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