4/9/2023 0 Comments Espionage agent![]() The secret services were the ones in charge to gather strategic information in these countries from the so-called “correspondents”, businessmen and people from the African nations that reported to them. These intelligence networks were named the “Foccart réseaux”. Another surprising element of the power of France in Africa were the thousands of French teachers that kept teaching in lycées and Universities, many of them reporting to the French Secret Service (the SDECE, that later became the DGSE). ![]() In the early post-colonial time, the former French colonial public servants were also key to maintain France’s influence, as the new governments, like the one of Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d’Ivoire, were encourage by Foccart to take them. Known as “Monsieur Afrique”, Foccart had been responsible of the intelligence networks of the Free France during World War Two and he used that expertise to build networks of agents across the different new independent African countries through the French secret services. They are the legacy of Jacques Foccart, who was Secrétaire Général de l'Élysée aux affaires Africaines et Malgaches bewteen 19. ![]() Most of the French intelligence networks in Africa come from the time when the colonial era collapsed. But according to these authors, the DGSE is losing its grip due to increasing competition from other foreign agencies. The French Secret Service-the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE)-has a strong presence in the African continent, as it is reported with a lot of details by the book Nos chers espions en Afrique (our dear spies in Africa), written by the French journalists Antoine Glaser and Thomas Hofnung. The presence of soldiers and spies in African countries might seem like something of the Cold War, but it is also something very typical of our time, even in a world dominated by big digital communications.įrance is the country with the longest intelligence tradition in Western Africa.
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