In Senegal, a country bustling with French-owned businesses and nationals, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s recent announcement that France should shut down its military bases should have come as a surprise. Yet, analysts say, it was a move that was always going to come.
In November, Faye asked Paris to remove some 350 French troops stationed on Senegalese soil, effectively ending a defence pact that had existed for decades and continuing a trend that has seen many West African nations sever or downgrade once-strong ties with former coloniser France in recent years.
