Eurafrica or the Europeanization of Françafrique

What Françafrique is to France, Eurafrique is to Europe.

There are historical projects that never die. They silently shape international relations for decades. They change their name, their form, and their rhetoric, but never their purpose. Eurafrica is one of them. It is neither a slogan, nor a treaty, nor an organization, nor a formal alliance, nor a conspiracy theory, nor an ideological fantasy. It is both an architecture and a strategic vision. An architecture of power. A way of organizing the Euro-African space so that wealth flows from South to North, and decision-making flows from North to South.

This strategic vision was born in European planning circles in the aftermath of the Second World War, when Europe realized that it could not remain a world power without controlling, directly or indirectly, African resources, routes, and spaces.

From then on, Eurafrica became not a historical event but a historical process. A slow, deliberate, methodical process, conceived not by politicians, but by strategists, military personnel, economists, engineers, bankers, and planners. Politicians, for their part, merely announce what has already been decided elsewhere.

To understand Eurafrica, one must abandon the moralistic view of history and adopt the geopolitical perspective. From Machiavelli to Meinecke, from Bodin to Botero, and from Hobbes to Richelieu, theorists of “reason of state” have concluded that “necessity knows no law.” In other words, “States have no friends, only interests.” And interests are governed by geography, resources, trade routes, and power dynamics.

After 1945, France and Europe were weakened. The United States dominated, the USSR was advancing, and colonial empires were collapsing. Europe had to find a new form of empire without formal colonies. Eurafrica was that solution: replacing the colonial empire with a functional one.

The idea was so simple:

If Europe unites its industry, technology, finance, and military power, and combines this with raw materials, energy, demographics, and the African space, then the Euro-African whole would become a bloc capable of competing with the United States, Russia, and later China.

In other words, Eurafrica was never a project to develop Africa. Eurafrica was designed to preserve European power.

In any power strategy, there is always a key space. In Eurafrica, this space is neither Paris nor Brussels, nor Addis Ababa nor even Rabat. The decisive space is the Sahara-Sahel-Mediterranean-Atlantic axis.

The key area is the Sahara-Sahel strip. Why? Because this strip connects North Africa to sub-Saharan Africa, the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea to the Gulf of Guinea, oil, gas, uranium, gold, rare earth zones, migration routes, solar corridors for the energy of the future, military roads, future trade routes.

Whoever controls this space controls the North-South flow of traffic in West Africa. And whoever controls that flow controls the economy, security, and politics. Even more importantly, whoever structures this space shapes much of West Africa’s destiny.

This is why Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Libya, Chad, Algeria, Morocco, and Western Sahara are not ordinary territories. They are pieces on the Euro-African chessboard.

This is why the major crises of recent decades are not geographically random: Libya, Mali, Niger, Chad, Western Sahara. They are pieces on the same spatial chessboard. Viewed separately, each conflict seems local. Viewed from above, they reveal a geostrategic continuity.

Geography doesn’t explain everything, but nothing can be explained without it.

The return via the side

One of the classic principles of strategy is circumvention. When a power can no longer enter through the door, it returns through the window; when it is expelled from a center, it repositions itself on the periphery; when it loses a military position, it replaces it with an economic or logistical one.

What we are seeing today in the Sahel-Saharan region is precisely this. The reduction of the direct military presence of certain European powers in the Sahel does not necessarily signify a strategic withdrawal but rather a reconfiguration. Influence can take other forms: ports, trade corridors, energy agreements, infrastructure, regional alliances, indirect security cooperation, funding of regional organizations, and control of export routes.

In geopolitics, losing a military base may be less serious than losing a port, a trade route, or an energy transit zone.

Whoever controls the flows controls the states.

The Sahara is not a desert

France’s recognition of Western Sahara in favor of Morocco is not a diplomatic gesture. It is a geostrategic move that is part of a historical continuum, the real issue being that Western Sahara allows for:

Access to the Atlantic;

Control of Sahelian trade routes;

The passage of future pipelines;

Cable and infrastructure control;

Trade opening towards landlocked countries (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso);

A military projection towards the Sahel.

Thus, having been militarily expelled from the Sahel, France is seeking to regain a geographical foothold through Morocco and Western Sahara. This is no longer a direct military strategy, but a strategy of economic, logistical, and political encirclement.

We don’t always return with soldiers. We return with ports, roads, banks, businesses, alliances.

Eurafrica today is no longer called Eurafrica.

His name is partnership, development, investments, combating terrorism, migration management, energy transition, infrastructure, cooperation.

The words change; the structure remains.

Modern control no longer necessarily involves military occupation but rather debt, standards, trade agreements, military bases, NGOs, foreign-educated elites, currencies, infrastructure controlled by European companies, technology, and data.

Modern power is invisible. And invisible power is more powerful than visible power because it cannot be fought.

In such a system, political sovereignty exists legally, but economic and strategic sovereignty is limited in practice. This type of structure corresponds much more closely to the spirit of Eurafrica than classical colonialism. It is a system in which Africa remains indispensable, but rarely the decision-maker.

Africa often thinks that domination is military. However, modern domination is systemic. It consists of ensuring that:

African raw materials supply European industries;

African capital should be placed in European banks;

African elites should be trained according to European models;

African armies depend on European training;

African technologies are being imported from Europe;

African currencies should be controlled by Europe;

African infrastructure is built by European powers;

African trade routes should be oriented outwards and not between African countries.

In this system, Africa is working for a system that is not its own.

This is what Eurafrica is: a system in which Africa is the space, and Europe is the center of decision-making.

Europe today faces three major threats: demographic decline, energy and mining dependence, industrial lag compared to China, Russia, and, of course, the United States.

To survive as a power, it needs African minerals – gas, oil, uranium, cobalt, lithium, manganese, rare earth elements, the African market, the African labor force, Africa’s geographical location.

Eurafrica is therefore no longer just one project among others, but a strategic necessity for Europe.

And when a project becomes a necessity, it is no longer negotiable.

The East enters the scene

Europe wants Africa without the Africans. But the world has changed. And that’s where the equation becomes historic.

For the first time in 500 years, Africa has a choice between several partners:

Russia (military, security, energy);

China (infrastructure, industry, finance);

Iran (industry, energy, technology under sanctions);

Türkiye (military industry, construction);

India (pharmaceutical industry, technology, training) ;

BRICS (alternative finance, dedollarization).

These powers act in direct opposition to the European powers. They operate according to a principle of multipolarity and polycentrism. This is why the historical difference is fundamental:

For centuries, Africa had only one possible partner. Today, it can pit powers against each other. And where there is competition, there is negotiation. And where there is negotiation, there is the possibility of sovereignty. True sovereignty always begins with the diversification of dependencies. A country that depends on a single partner obeys. A country that depends on several partners negotiates. A country on which others depend becomes sovereign.

We may have entered a period of reshaping everything: trade routes, military alliances, monetary systems, economic blocs, technologies, energy. In these periods of transition, global hierarchies can shift. But only strategically organized actors benefit from historical transitions. The others become arenas of competition.

The question, therefore, is not simply whether Eurafrica exists, has existed, or will exist. The real question is whether Africa will remain a space organized by others or whether it will become a power organizing its own space.

History does not punish the weak. It erases the disorganized.

The 21st century will not be just a century of wealth, technology, or armies. It will be a century of strategic spatial organization. And in this great reorganization of the world, Africa is either a stake or a player.

But she cannot be both at the same time.

The real African question of the 21st century is therefore neither economic, nor military, nor diplomatic. It is strategic and civilizational: Does Africa want to be a space within the strategy of others or a strategy for itself?

Everything else will depend on the answer to this question.

Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Human and Social Sciences, Pan-African University

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