Ivory Coast has declared that it will remove its French troops from the West African country, significantly diminishing the former colonial power’s military clout in the area.
Alassane Ouattara, the president of Ivory Coast, stated in a year-end speech that the action reflected the nation’s military modernization.
Separately, Senegal said the pullout will be finished by the end of 2025, after announcing last month that France would have to abandon its military sites on its territory.
The largest remaining French military force in West Africa is based in Ivory Coast.
There are about 600 French soldiers in the nation, 350 of them are in Senegal.
President Ouattara declared, “We have made a deliberate decision to remove the French military from the Ivory Coast.”
He went on to say that Ivorian troops would take over the French army’s infantry battalion in Port Bouét.
Following military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger as well as rising anti-French sentiment, France, whose colonial dominance in West Africa ended in the 1960s, has already withdrawn its troops from those nations.
In November, the government of Chad, a crucial Western partner in the conflict with Islamic terrorists in the region, abruptly terminated its defense cooperation agreement with France.
“I have asked the minister for the armed forces to submit a new strategy for cooperation in defense and security, encompassing, among other implications, the end of all foreign military presences in Senegal from 2025,” stated Senegalese President Bassirou Dioumaye Faye.
Faye won the March election on a platform of restoring sovereignty and reducing reliance on other nations.
In Gabon, France will continue to have a minor presence.
Following the expulsion of French forces from their nations, the military chiefs of Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have shifted their ties to Russia.
To assist them in fending off jihadist terrorists, Russia then sent mercenaries throughout the Sahel.
It appears that France currently has less than 2,000 troops in Gabon and Djibouti.
According to political observers, France has been working to regain its declining military and political might in Africa.
To drastically reduce its permanent personnel presence on the continent, the former political power seems to be developing a new military policy of downscaling military ties.
Ivory Coast, or Côte d’Ivoire as it is known in French, was renowned for its well-developed economy and religious and ethnic harmony for more than thirty years after gaining independence from France.
They praised the nation in Western Africa as a model of stability. A violent uprising in 2002, however, divided the country. The nation gradually made its way toward a political settlement of the conflict, with peace agreements interspersed with new acts of bloodshed.
Notwithstanding the unrest, Ivory Coast remains the world’s top exporter of cocoa beans, and its people earn a comparatively good standard of living in comparison to other nations in the region.
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