On Monday, General Brice Oligui Ngeuma was declared interim president of Gabon. His investiture, supposedly promising an eventual democratic “transition,” came after the bogus reelection of longtime ruler Ali Bongo, and his arrest by the military. Bongo, a French partner, had taken over the reins in 2009 upon the death of his father, who had been the central African country’s effective president-for-life since 1967 — most of the period since Gabon won its independence from Paris.

The eighth coup in a former French colony since 2020, events in Gabon were more than anything driven by popular exhaustion with the Bongo dynasty. But they also had something to say about France’s waning influence. The same day as Ngeuma’s takeover, French foreign minister Catherine Colonna told Le Monde: “Françafrique has been dead for a long time.” With this term, she referred to the close commercial and military ties that France maintained in its former empire in the decades after formal decolonization.

Events elsewhere in the Sahel show, yet more starkly, how much anti-French sentiment is breaking apart these ties and the governments bound up in them. Take the case of Niger. In late July, military officers in the capital Niamey ousted the French-aligned, democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum. The junta in power has since stared down threats of military intervention — spurred on by Paris — from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional body, led by countries such as Nigeria and Senegal.