Uranium factor in France’s foreign policy towards Africa

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Abstract: Use of the comparative political analysis allowed the author to identify certain trends within France’s foreign policy towards Africa of the beginning of this millennium. Analysis of the geographic localization of the expeditions of the French armed forces into Africa confirms the fact that the Élysée Palace initiated the peacekeeping and humanitarian interventions within the territories of the sovereign nations of the Dark Continent whenever France faced a serious threat to their energy security. The threat to the interests of the French state corporation AREVA, which specializes in recovery and refinement of uranium ore, was always followed by operations of the special services and military interventions in Niger, Mali and the Central African Republic. The methodological basis for this research consisted of the systemic, structural-functional, comparative-historical approaches, methods of analysis, synthesis, observation, and modeling. The author substantiates the opinion according to which the rapid escalation of the competitiveness and the African uranium markets, emergence of new players in these markets, first and foremost China, prompts France to resort to various forms of political and military pressure (from political assassinations and incitement of confessional and tribal conflicts to direct military intrusion) upon the political elites of their former colonies. A conclusion is made on the fact that it is the direct dependency of the French nuclear power plants, and therefore the whole French economy, upon the African uranium defines the main vector of the Africa policy of the Fifth Republic.

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