Anti-French discourse in French-speaking Africa has spread beyond the educated urban elites and the phenomenon could “take lasting root”, estimates Alain Antil, researcher at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) in an interview with l AFP. A trend on which the Algerian president has surfed by reintroducing an anti-French couplet in the national anthem of Algeria.
Criticism of France’s policy has been accompanied in recent years by violent protests against French companies such as Total or against diplomatic representations in Chad, Mali and more recently in Burkina Faso.
The depth of the phenomenon has “nothing comparable to what we could see in previous decades”, underlines Alain Antil, who directs the Sub-Saharan Africa Center of Ifri and who publishes on Wednesday, with his colleague Thierry Vircoulon, a study devoted to “Themes, actors and functions of anti-French discourse in French-speaking Africa”.
We are now a long way from the time “when very articulate criticism (…) was confined to leading circles of intellectuals and which, sometimes, during serious political crises, could spill out into the streets”, he says.
It is striking to note that the detractors no longer even seek to demonstrate untruths.
For the researcher, the intensification of anti-French sentiment can be explained by “disappointing economic and political trajectories” in countries where the population had once founded the hope of economic progress and in terms of democracy.
“African public opinion is extraordinarily sensitive – we can understand them – to the fact of treating them as equals and not of having someone who gives lessons or who is ironic”, he concludes.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune even went so far as to sign a new presidential decree restoring a verse from the anti-French Algerian national anthem, which had been “withdrawn” in 1986 by President Chadli Bendjedid for political reasons. ‘era.
The couplet of discord in the Algerian national anthem is: O France! the time for palaver is over, We have closed it as one closes a book, O France! the day has come when you have to be accountable, get ready! here is our answer, The verdict, Our revolution will deliver it, Because we have decided that Algeria will live, Be a witness! Witness it! Witness it!
