Last week’s military coup against Mohamed Bazoum, Niger’s elected president, leaves hopes of a fresh relationship severely frayed. On July 30th protesters in Niamey, Niger’s capital, declared “Down with France!” and waved Russian flags. A crowd attacked the French embassy, setting fire to the door and smashing windows. Macron said that French military bases in Africa would henceforth be jointly run by local armed forces, with a “visible reduction” of French soldiers on the ground. It was to be a new phase in the Franco-African reset that Mr Macron first laid out in a speech in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, in 2017. Are the francophone countries replacing their colonizers with Russia ?

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