French military base in Djibouti may assume a greater role, France’s president suggested last week, as its troops are asked by Chadian authorities to speed up their withdrawal from the base in N’Djamena with the deadline set for December 31.
It’s been a tumultuous month for France and its relationship with its former African colonies after Senegal’s president Faye asked Paris to remove some 350 French troops stationed on his country’s soil and Chad’s government announced on its Independence Day it was ending defense cooperation with France to redefine its sovereignty. Then last Friday, authorities in Chad, considered as France’s most stable and loyal partner in Africa, demanded the total withdrawal of all French personnel from its base in N’Djamena by December 31. But Chadian officials have stressed that, unlike the situation in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), the troop withdrawal from Chadian soil does not imply a breakdown in relations with France.
This is yet another setback for Paris that was already devising a new military strategy in Africa, aiming to sharply reduce its permanent troop presence on the continent, as its influence on the continent faces the biggest challenge in decades.
Faced with these challenges in the Sahel region in West Africa, France’s president has said that its military base in Djibouti would be “reinvented” to assume a great role. While the airbase’s main focus is currently on the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Indo-Pacific, President Emmanuel Macron proposes assigning a bigger role in restructuring French approach on the African continent. “Our role is changing in Africa, but that’s what we wanted because the world is changing in Africa, because public opinion is changing, because governments are changing,” Macron said during his visit to French airbase in Djibouti, which recently renewed its defense cooperation treaty with Paris.
After being successively pushed out of junta-ruled Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger between 2022 and 2023, Djibouti is now home to France’s largest military contingent aboard.