After being forced to withdraw its troops from the Sahel region in West Africa, France\u2019s president said on Friday that its military base in Djibouti could assume a great role.<\/p>\n
Emmanuel Macron said it would be \u201creinvented\u201d as a projection point for the country\u2019s missions in Africa.<\/p>\n
Currently the base is more focused on the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Indo-Pacific than it is on Africa.<\/p>\n
Macron described the move as a strategic decision which is part of France\u2019s restructuring of its approach on the African continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur role is changing in Africa, but that’s what we wanted because the world is changing in Africa, because public opinion is changing, because governments are changing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd because we decided in a sovereign way in February 2023, after several years of gradual change, to rebuild a partnership that is based on partners, respected.\u2019<\/p>\n
He was speaking on Friday after sharing a Christmas dinner with the 1,500 French soldiers at its airbase in Djibouti, which recently renewed its defence cooperation treaty with Paris.<\/p>\n
That makes it home to France\u2019s largest military contingent aboard.<\/p>\n
French forces were successively pushed out of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger \u2013 all three under military rule – between 2022 and 2023.<\/p>\n
Its troops have begun withdrawing from Chad in the latest blow to its dwindling influence across its former colonies in Africa.<\/p>\n
Senegal has requested the departure of French troops while they are being reduced to a bare minimum in Gabon and Cote d\u2019Ivoire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After being forced to withdraw its troops from the Sahel region in West Africa, France\u2019s president said on Friday that its military base in Djibouti could assume a great role. Emmanuel Macron said it would be \u201creinvented\u201d as a projection point for the country\u2019s missions in Africa. Currently the base is more focused on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":6,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Africa News","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,1129],"tags":[452,3619,290,286],"class_list":["post-14594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-security","tag-djibouti","tag-djibouti-military-base","tag-france","tag-sahel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}