Ivory Coast has announced it would be sending back the French troops after a long spell of military stationing, making a huge break with its foreign colonial power after their other sibling West African nations downscaled military cooperation with colonial power France.
In an end-of-year address to the nation on Tuesday, President Alassane Ouattara said that as of next January 1, 2025, French troops stationed at Port-Bouet in Abidjan would be transferred to the Ivoirian armed forces. “The last bases will be handed over,” the president said.
We can be proud to defend a modernized and increasingly more battle-hardened army. It is in this context that we have decided on the concerted and organized withdrawal of French forces,” Ouattara said.
France has approximately 1,000 men 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, Senegal and Chad also made announcements of separate timelines for the withdrawal of French soldiers.
The first French military base in Chad was returned to Chad on December 26, the last Sahel nation on which French troops were stationed.
Ivory Coast remains an important ally of France. The downscaling of military ties comes with France trying to reboot its political and military influence in Africa by creating a completely different military strategy, drastically decreasing troop presence on the ground across the whole continent.
Currently, France has been expelled from over 70 percent of African countries where it had a troop presence since the end of colonial rule in the 1960s. The French remain only in Djibouti, with 1,500 soldiers and Gabon.