IPNEWS: Senegal’s President, Bassirou Dioumaye Faye, said that 2025 would see an end to all foreign military presence in the West African country, in a speech on Tuesday to mark the new year.
Faye’s statement came a month after he announced that former colonial master France would have to close its military bases in Senegal.
“I have instructed the minister for the armed forces to propose a new doctrine for cooperation in defence and security, involving, among other consequences, the end of all foreign military presences in Senegal from 2025,” said Faye, who was elected in March.
This is the first time he has set a date for the closure of foreign military bases.th 360: Sickle Cell Disease
“All of Senegal’s friends will be treated like strategic partners, within the framework of open, diversified and uninhibited cooperation,” said Faye.
The president, who took office in April, was elected on a promise to deliver sovereignty and end dependence on foreign countries.
On November 28, he told AFP that the presence of French military bases in Senegal was incompatible with that sovereignty.
“Senegal is an independent country, it is a sovereign country, and sovereignty does not accept the presence of military bases in a sovereign country,” he said, some 64 years after Senegal’s independence from France.
He, however, maintained that the act did not constitute a break with France, like those seen elsewhere in West Africa in recent years.
“France remains an important partner for Senegal for the investment for Senegal and the presence of French companies and even French citizens who are in Senegal,” said Faye.
Ivory Coast has also announced that French troops will leave the country this month after a decades-long military presence, becoming the latest African nation to downscale military ties with its former coloniser.
In an end-of-year 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 Ivory Coast’s armed forces as of January 2025.
“We can be proud of our army, whose modernisation is now effective. It is in this context that we have decided on the concerted and organised withdrawal of French forces” from Ivory Coast, Ouattara said.
France, whose colonial rule in West Africa ended in the 1960s, has nearly 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 downscaling of military ties comes as France tries to revive its waning political and military influence on the African continent by devising a new military strategy that would sharply reduce its permanent troop presence across the continent.
France has now been kicked out of more than 70 percent of African countries where it had a troop presence since the end of its colonial rule. The French remain only in Djibouti, with 1,500 soldiers, and Gabon, with 350 personnel.
Analysts have described the developments as part of the wider structural transformation in the region’s engagement with Paris amid growing local sentiments against France, especially in coup-hit countries.
After expelling the French troops, military leaders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso have moved closer to Russia.
