Gabon: The role of France

 

Coup highlights France's enduring friendship with longtime rulers of Gabon 

Part of France's empire in Central Africa until 1960, Gabon has remained one of its key allies on the continent. As soldiers attempt to overthrow President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who took over from his father, RFI looks back at France's role as the first and most faithful ally of the Bongo family.

France officially occupied Gabon in 1885, ten years after French-Italian explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza led a first mission to the region and founded the town of Franceville – one of Gabon's largest cities to this day.

In 1910 Gabon was declared part of French Equatorial Africa, and would remain under French rule for the next 50 years.

Like most of France's sub-Saharan colonies, it gained independence in 1960.

But Gabon and France remained close. Thousands of French citizens remained in the country after independence, the French oil company Elf exploited a large part of its crude production, and others mined its iron, manganese and timber for exports.

Gabonese uranium also supplied France's nuclear weapons and power plants.

And the friendship was closely protected by the family that ruled over Gabon for 55 years: the Bongos.

A dynasty begins

Omar Bongo Ondimba, the man who ruled Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009, famously said: "Gabon without France is like a car with no driver. France without Gabon is like a car with no fuel."

Bongo was promoted to key positions in the 1960s as a young official under Gabon's first president, Léon Mba, before being elected vice-president in his own right in 1966.

In 1964, when renegade soldiers arrested Bongo in Libreville and kidnapped Mba, French paratroopers rescued the abducted president and his deputy, restoring them to power.

When Mba died in November 1967, Bongo succeeded him to become the second president of Gabon.

As head of state he travelled regularly to France, where he owned dozens of properties, and enjoyed the backing – more or less openly – of successive French governments.

Bongo's international relations were dominated by his relationship with France, Gabon falling within the ambit of what experts began calling "Françafrique".

"Gabon is an extreme case, verging on caricature, of neocolonialism," wrote French journalist Pierre Péan in 1983.

Special relationship

Omar Bongo carefully cultivated close relations with French politicians.

The Gabonese president was accused of bankrolling election campaigns for friendly candidates in France. Most notably, former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing publicly claimed that Bongo helped fund the 1981 presidential campaign of his rival, Jacques Chirac.

Chirac denied the allegation.

Meanwhile France's footprint in Gabon was clear to see.

In 1988, the New York Times reported that through its aid, France subsidised "a third of Gabon's budget, extending low-interest trade loans, paying the salaries of 170 French advisers and 350 French teachers and paying scholarships for most of the roughly 800 Gabonese who study in France every year".

According to French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîné, "$2.6 million of this aid also went for the interior decoration of a DC-8 jet belonging to President Bongo".

For years, France even turned a blind eye to the Bongo family's acquisition of luxury homes in Paris and on the Côte d'Azur.

France always maintained a permanent military base in Gabon, and in 1990, when pro-democracy protests threatened to oust Bongo from power, it helped keep him in place.

In 1993, with Bongo threatened again, the French government brokered a peace accord between Bongo's leadership and an angry opposition.

Second Bongo era

When Omar Bongo died in June 2009, his son Ali took over as head of the Gabonese Democratic Party.

He ran as the party's candidate for president in a snap election in August that year.

The French president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy – who had made Gabon one of the first countries he visited when he became president two years earlier – openly backed Ali Bongo's campaign.

Rumours flew that the elder Bongo had stashed secret documents at the presidential palace that could discredit France, which according to Florence Bernault, professor of African history at political science university Sciences Po, was thought to be a factor in Sarkozy's support.

But relations weren't always so cosy under the second President Bongo.

In 2010 the French judiciary opened a so-called "ill-gotten gains" enquiry into the origin of the fortune Omar Bongo used to buy expensive assets in France.

Spanning 15 years, the probe resulted in the seizure of several properties and embezzlement charges against several of Bongo's children – though not Ali Bongo, who as a sitting president benefitted from immunity.

Wind of change?

In 2015, France also opened an investigation into Ali Bongo's chief of staff on suspicion of accepting a bribe from a French company to help secure a contract.

Since his election in 2017, President Emmanuel Macron has promised to put an end to "Françafrique" and to be a more neutral partner.

And Bongo did decide to diversify Gabon's partners.

In 2022, as Bongo requested, Gabon even joined the Commonwealth, alongside with Togo, becoming the latest nations with no historic ties to Britain to enter the English-speaking club headed by Queen Elizabeth II.  

But during his latest visit to Libreville in March 2023, Macron appeared as close to Bongo as his predecessors ever were. 

France condemned his toppling, and still has around 400 troops in the country.