According to the US conservative magazine "The National Interest", Jacques Foccart played "an essential role" in the negotiation of the Cooperation accords with the newly independent African states, former members of the French Community created in 1958. These accords involved the sectors of finance and economy, culture and education, and the military. There were initially eleven countries involved: Mauritania, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Niger, Chad, Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, and Madagascar. Togo and Cameroon, former UN Trust Territories, as well as, later on, Mali and the former Belgian territories (Ruanda-Urundi, now Rwanda and Burundi, and Congo-Kinshasa), together with some of the ex-Portuguese territories, and Comoros and Djibouti, which had also been under French rule for many years but became independent in the 1970s, were also later included.