Pressed by their U.S. competitors, the French rulers are using their connections with various regimes in their former colonies, and their established position as a major exploiter in the region, to gain leverage in this race.

Within two weeks of the February 20–21 Paris summit of 52 African heads of state--the 22nd such meeting--President Jacques Chirac traveled to Algeria to foster ties with the repressive regime there.

The French president was accompanied by the executives of 17 corporations, including Airbus, Michelin, and the oil company TotalFinaElf.

The country’s oil and gas reserves are one area that might attract imperialist investment. Other potential investors, noted the New York Times, "complain that Algeria has largely failed to privatize its economy."

Chirac is the first French president to pay a full state visit to the country since 1962, the year Algerians won their eight-year independence struggle against the French colonial power. More than 1 million Algerians died in that war, which was a high point of the uprisings that spread throughout the former colonial territories in the decades following World War II.

Chirac himself served as an army officer in Algeria during the independence war.

Hundreds of thousands of Algerians turned out to greet the French president in the streets of the capital, Algiers. However, "the cries from the crowd were not cries of ‘Vive la France,’" noted the Times, but "Visa! Visa! Visa!"

Algerian citizens trying to move to France have reported long delays in receiving responses to visa applications in recent years. For many, emigration offers the only hope of finding work and escaping poverty, in a country where the official, understated unemployment rate stands at 30 percent.  
 
A record of colonial brutality
In the colonial period, in which European powers, including Britain, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, directly ruled African peoples, the French authorities gained a reputation as among the most brutal of the all the colonial administrators.

"In France’s equatorial African territories" at the turn of the last century, writes Adam Hochschild in King Leopold’s Ghost, a study of Belgian colonialism and the king who promoted it, "forced labor, hostages, slave chains...and the chicotte [whip] were the order of the day" on the rubber plantations. "Thousands of refugees who had fled across the Congo river to escape Leopold’s regime eventually fled back to escape the French. The population loss in the rubber-rich equatorial rain forest owned by France is estimated, just as in Leopold’s Congo, at roughly 50 percent."

The French territories, adds Hochschild, "were wracked by long, fierce rebellions against the rubber regime."

Another snapshot of the methods and character of French colonialism can be seen in their use of subject peoples as cannon fodder in World War I. During that war the French armed forces "recruited" some 200,000 West Africans into the imperialist army. In his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Guyanese writer Walter Rodney said the techniques employed were "reminiscent of slave hunting."

Following the next world war, Paris used troops from its colonies in failed attempts to quell the revolutions in Africa and Indochina. Senegalese troops were used against the Algerian independence movement.  
 
French military intervention
As of 1997 France has some 9,000 troops stationed in Africa, and "military cooperation agreements" with 23 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. That year Paris initiated an African "peacekeeping" force named the Reinforcement of African Peacekeeping Capacities ( RECAMP). The organization’s military exercises last year involved 900 troops from 16 African countries, according to the French officials in charge of the maneuvers.

RECAMP notwithstanding, Paris has relied on its own armed forces to defend its interests on the continent. Since its 1964 assault on Gabon up to the late 1990s, French imperialism has intervened in Africa about once a year. Currently Paris has stationed some 3,000 troops in the Ivory Coast to back a settlement of the civil war, as it seeks to stabilize a pro-imperialist regime in Abidjan. This is the largest French military intervention in Africa since a similar number of troops were sent to Chad in the 1980s.

Hundreds of thousands protested in January against the French-imposed pact, with some carrying signs appealing to U.S. imperialism, saying, "Bush help us. Chirac is a Criminal, Terrorist, Murderer."

Ivory Coast is one member of the African Franc Zone, which involves 14 West and Central African countries. Formed in 1939, the grouping serves as a conduit for French capital into countries whose currencies are tied to the French franc, and now the euro.

French investment in sub-Saharan Africa involves some 1,500 French companies and affiliates. The region represents a yearly export market worth more than $16 billion to these firms. They directly benefit from the $8.4 billion in "aid" allocated by Paris to sub-Saharan Africa. One-quarter of the total amount is directed at the former French colonies of Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, and Morocco.

The majority of the money Paris spends on such programs worldwide is tied to the purchase of products from specific French corporations.  
 
Competition from the U.S. imperialists
As it presses its own predatory economic interests in Africa, the U.S. government--like its competitor in Paris--presents itself as a paternalistic benefactor of the African people. In his January 28 State of the Union address, U.S. president Bush announced an "Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief," stating that $15 billion would go to sub-Saharan countries to combat the spread of AIDS that has become a social catastrophe for the people of the region. Some 30 million of the world’s 42 million people diagnosed with the disease live in Africa.

The program will not cover some of the worst-affected countries like Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Malawi, which have some of the highest AIDS rates in the world. It also follows years of attempts by Washington to block the production or purchase of low-cost generic versions of expensive AIDS drug treatments in Africa. It does cover some countries, like Algeria, where competition between Washington and Paris over oilfields and other resources is fierce.

Meanwhile, the U.S. rulers are already well-advanced in their push into Africa. Under the guise of aiding the economic development of the countries below the Sahara, Congress passed the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in May 2000. It is under this measure that U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa reached record levels in 2001. Imports from the region dropped, however.

A central target of the AGOA is the African clothing industry. Touted as a program that would help "millions of African families find opportunity to build prosperity," the act only provides duty-free and quota-free access to the U.S. market for African-produced apparel that are made with U.S. materials.

Eligibility requirements for AGOA include "a market-based economy that protects private property rights," and a government that "does not engage in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interest...and cooperates in international efforts to eliminate...terrorist activities."  
 
Africa’s oil wealth a big prize
One of the biggest prizes for the competing powers is the continent’s oil resources. South Africa’s Business Day newspaper reported on December 10 that "the rate of discovery of new oil reserves in Africa has been the fastest in the world in the past five years, according to the U.S. Corporate Council on Africa. Most of these new proven reserves have been found around the Gulf of Guinea."

At present, some 15 percent of U.S. oil imports come from West Africa--mainly Angola and Nigeria. U.S. officials estimate the number will rise to 25 percent by 2015.

The Johannesburg-based paper noted that "a key factor in U.S. calculations is the role played in West Africa by the quota-setting Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) or, more accurately, the lack of a role. The only OPEC member in West Africa is Nigeria."

In penetrating these new fields, the U.S. oil companies face competition, including from TotalFinaElf. Fully 70 percent of the French company’s production comes from Nigeria, Angola, United Arab Emirates, and the North Sea. The operation of new fields off the coast of Angola has expanded its capacity by 200,000 barrels per day.

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa and the fifth-largest exporter to the United States. Other West African nations are expanding production. A pipeline now under construction linking southern Chad to Atlantic ports is the largest single investment project on the continent. Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. oil companies have increasing investments, is expected to double its production within three years.

Alongside its growing investments, Washington has also stationed troops on the continent, deploying 2,000 U.S. forces in Djibouti. Paris already has some 2,700 troops there.

Pentagon officials have held discussions on stepping up military exchanges with West African countries and possibly establishing a military base on the island of Sao Tomé.  
 
 
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