Something is happening to and in Africa that is not easy to characterise or that Intervention doesn’t have enough details to characterise. A set of African states – the three Sahelian states of Mali, Niger Republic and Burkina Faso – expelled France for perpetuating domination over the decades. But another set of African leaders have converged in Kenya into a plumage with France. Is the continent so divided all its conflict management infrastructure could do nothing else than manifest the division so openly?
Could it be that those with France now tried to settle the Sahelian states-France rift behind the scenes but failed? Even if that were the case, was the convergence in Nairobi last week the next best option?
It is possible that President Ruto of Kenya who is playing the arrow head is advancing his country’s national interest the way he understands it. But how great it would still have been to see him – an East African leader – step in as peace maker between certain states of West Africa and their former colonial patron, especially on terms far more just and equitable to the ex-colonies in a relationship that has been largely unequal? What has happened to African solutions to African problems in this case?
Perhaps, this is still an unfolding story and some other actors within the African system are there working behind the scenes to correct the ugly impression of a divided continent over France. But a division which has to come to the open?
