EURAFRICAN GEOPOLITICS? A Qualitative Textual Analysis of the French Geopolitical Construction of Africa in the Post-Cold War Period

Abstract

Françafrique is a neo-colonial practice characterized by frequent armed interventions in Africa that defined France’s Africa-strategy during the Cold War. French leaders have announced a rupture with Françafrique since the early 1990’s. In the meantime, France has increasingly included the EU in its Africa-strategy. The scholarly literature draws diverging conclusions on if France is Europeanizing a neo-colonial strategy or not, and to what extent the Europeanization is linked to the concept of Eurafrica. Eurafrica denotes a (neo-)colonial idea of forming a Euro-African geographical entity and had its heydays in the late 1950’s. There is however no comprehensive definition of the concept and its underlying ideas and assumptions. This thesis has set out to examine how the concept of Eurafrica can be defined, to what extent French Africa-strategy can be labeled Eurafrican, and if this has evolved in the post-Cold War period, as well as if the announced “rupture” with Françafrique is indeed a change or merely a transfer of a neo-colonial practice to a European level. The thesis concludes that Eurafrica is composed of six subcategories, characterized by constructivist, neo-liberal and neo-realist theoretical assumptions. A frame of analysis is created based on the unpacked definition of Eurafrica and used in a textual analysis of three French White Papers on Defense. It is determined that French Africa-strategy bears less Eurafrican traits than some scholars suggest and is considerably less neocolonial in the 21st century than in 1994.