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Togo's President Faure Gnassingbe speaks during a joint news conference with Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara.
Has Francophone Africa had enough of France?
The French (dis)connection: One big theme is saying au revoir to foreign (read: French) influence. In just the past four years, a number of former French colonies where Paris still wielded power – such as Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Gabon, and Chad – have experienced military coups in which the overthrown governments were cast, at least in part, as being puppets of Paris.
Lawmakers at the summit accused France of failing to contain rebel groups, pressuring local governments, and making it harder for local leaders to tackle national issues independently.
The meeting comes as France is losing ground in the region anyway. In 2023, it had to pull its troops out of Niger and Burkina Faso following military takeovers by juntas hostile to Paris. Mali has banned French media amid rising hostility to perceived French meddling. And through it all, Russia has been expanding its security influence in the region by using its Wagner Group mercenaries to provide security for local governments.A Quebec flag flaps in the sky during the Moulin a Parole, a 24-hour long series of public readings, on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, September 13, 2009.
Universities fight to keep English education alive in Quebec
Concordia University announced it would join its fellow Montreal-based university, McGill, in providing financial aid of up to CA$4,000 to students from other provinces as a way of offsetting the impact of the Quebec government’s controversial new efforts to protect local Francophone culture.
In October, the Quebec provincial government announced tuition for students from other provinces would nearly double to CA$17,000 (it’s since been reduced to CA$12,000) and required at least 80% of non-Quebecer students to achieve intermediate skills in spoken French. The burden falls overwhelmingly on Concordia and McGill Universities, the only two public universities in Quebec that teach in English and attract a disproportionate number of out-of-province pupils due to their internationally recognized reputations.
The divide between Anglophone and Francophone Canadians has been a driving force in the politics of the Great White North for nearly three centuries, and the Quebec government says it is merely bolstering its hard-won protections for the French language. McGill President Deep Saini didn’t see it so sanguinely, calling the new rules a “targeted attack” on Anglophone universities that would do very little to improve the province’s Francophonie but would wreck academic reputations that took decades to build.
GZERO’s Social Media Manager Emilie Macfie is a bilingual Quebecer from an Anglophone family who graduated from McGill. She said she is not surprised by the government’s move, given the threat to the incumbent Coalition Avenir Québec from the stridently Francophone and independence-oriented Parti Québécois. “They’re scrambling desperately and trying to out PQ the PQ,” she said.
The financial aid from McGill and Concordia might help make an education in Quebec more feasible, but the early numbers don’t look good. Applications to McGill are down by 20%, and graduates are concerned their alma mater’s reputation may crumble if the best and brightest Canadians find another place to study.