Ivory Coast is the latest West African nation to expel the former colonial power’s troops after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Ivory Coast has announced that French troops will leave the country this month after a decades-long military presence, becoming the latest African nation to reduce military ties with its former colonizer.
In a year-end address to the nation on Tuesday, President Alassane Ouattara said the 43rd BIMA Marine Infantry Battalion at Port-Bouet in Abidjan – where French troops were stationed – “will be handed over” to the armed forces of the Ivory Coast. Ivory. January 2025.
“We can be proud of our army, whose modernization is now effective. It is in this context that we have decided on the coordinated and organized withdrawal of French forces” from Ivory Coast, Ouattara said.
France, whose colonial rule in West Africa ended in the 1960s, has about 1,000 soldiers in Ivory Coast, according to reports.
Ivory Coast is the latest West African nation to expel French troops after Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. In November, within hours of each other, Senegal and Chad also announced the departure of French soldiers from their soil.
On December 26, France returned its first military base to Chad, the last Sahel nation to host French troops.
Ivory Coast remains an important ally of France. The reduction in military ties comes as France tries to revive its declining political and military influence on the African continent by drawing up a new military strategy that would significantly reduce its permanent troop presence across the continent.
France has now been kicked out of more than 70 percent of the African countries where it had a troop presence since the end of its colonial rule. The French remain only in Djibouti with 1500 soldiers and in Gabon with 350 people.
Analysts have described the developments as part of a wider structural transformation in the region’s engagement with Paris, amid growing local sentiment against France, particularly in coup-hit countries.
Following the expulsion of French troops, the military leaders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have drawn closer to Russia.
