Another foreigner discovers the wonders of Francafrique, but he gets the mechanism wrong.

Although trying to study the place from third party sources is like watching Rashomon, this is pretty much how it works:
- "friendly" dictator is installed and maintained so long as he cooperates.
- aid packages are sent over (in cash, by plane) and loans made with friendly zero interest
- money flies straight back via Geneva to finance French parties (e.g. RPR and Chirac, but also Mitterrand whose network was a subset of Pasqua's, ironically; who knows who is in charge these days)
- country is maintained in poverty by any means practical (rigged election equipment with magical 90%+ wins, flying in 1,000 soldiers into Congo from Chad, shipping weapons by the crate...) so as to lower the cost of keeping it under control. This includes financing both sides of a war (as in Angola), and the "black governors" as some call them deliberately installing the rule of corruption from top to bottom (see Mobutu for the best example). The loans and missing aid definitely help keep the finances problematic, especially when they cause future resource production to be promised away for years as collateral.

It's important to note that Francafrique has been internationalised; FX Verschave, who despite being almost a communist has been very good at keeping track of the whole thing thinks the French networks have become subsets of the US ones. Cuba, Russia were also big players on the chessboard. As for the targets the saying is the louder they complain about the West, the closer they are. Omar Bongo was hand-chosen by De Gaulle (cf Foccart's memoirs) and trained and educated in France. He was the most reliable and famous, so close to the French government he arbitrated disputes between ministers.

You basically hear two sides of the story:
- "communists are trying to take over the place and we must stop them and forget human rights for a while whilst we do so" (CIA, Rhodesians, South Africans back in the days)
- "the Western capitalist powers will do anything to conquer their colonies and keep them in control, but we're the democratic choice" (Madagascar, Ghana, Zimbabwe and the aforementioned left wing countries). Some of the claims are pretty bold, for example aforementioned Verschave claims the left wing Mitterrand made Le Pen's political career happen (from 0.4 to 10% of the vote) in exchange for maintaining a nice vivier of far-right youth that could be relied on for African "holidays" and the occasional false flag car burning in Algerian-French banlieues.

I don't think either side is right of course but you can glimpse crumbs of truth from each side, and occasionally pockets of data emerge as the various powers take the fight to the press and public temporarily, or some Don Quixote decides to try her hand at windmills like Eva Joly against Elf (cf "Poisoned Wells" which is a nice taster to the place). I look forward to reading the declassified intelligence documents in 70 years or whatever it is. Mercenary accounts can be pretty entertaining too - I'll close with Simon Mann's quote about the French DGSE and military intelligence, "whatever you do, we can do dirtier".