Ivory Coast has announced that French forces will withdraw from its territory, following in the footsteps of several other West African countries and further reducing France’s waning power in the region.
French troops will leave Ivory Coast this month after handing over a military camp in a suburb of the country’s capital, President Alassane Ouattara said in an address broadcast to the nation Tuesday night.
France, a major former colonial power in Africa, has not commented publicly on the withdrawal, which follows similar announcements from West African countries, most recently Chad and Senegal.
France’s military presence in Africa will soon be limited to troops in Djibouti and Gabon — a far cry from its many troops that were stationed in the Sahel fighting jihadists just three years ago.
Mr. Ouattara said that the Ivorian army had been modernized to such a degree that French troops were no longer needed.
“We can be proud of our army, whose modernization is now complete,” he said in a New Year’s Eve address to the nation. “It is in this context that we have decided on the coordinated and organized withdrawal of French forces from the Ivory Coast.”
In recent years, there has been a sharp rise in criticism of France in its former African colonies, with many accusing the French of neocolonialist business practices and patronizing attitudes.
In Africa’s coup belt, a string of countries whose governments have been toppled in recent years, the ruling military juntas have leaned in to this criticism to rally public opinion.
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