ABSTRACT
A similar process of trial and error led the other French colonies towards independence, although with less political continuity and stability than that achieved in Cameroun. Decolonization brought an increase in French investment and French expatriate personnel to the Central African region after 1960 as the new governments expanded the role of the state from colonial minimalism to a much wider responsibility for education, economic planning and transport infrastructure for private industries, In the
north potential investors were attracted by mineral prospects in Chad, but neither the politicians nor the French were able to hold the country together after independence and war-lords ruled shifting fiefs with funds and weapons supplied by foreign supporters. In the diamond-rich Central African Republic, French politicians and businessmen manipulated local interest groups openly and even learnt to live with, and profit from, one of the most unsavoury of Africa’s soldier-politicians. Jean Bedel Bokassa had few credentials as a liberator, having fought for the French in Algeria, but when he returned home he succeeded in gaining power, using the national treasury to crown himself “emperor” after the style of Napoleon. Eventually his cruel excesses caused the French discreetly to remove him to comfortable exile and restore one of their former political clients, David Dacko, to presidential office in 1979. Further south the survival of French interests in Congo involved even more astute footwork as politicians across the spectrum from the Catholic Church to the Marxist officers’ clubs played musical chairs with ministerial office. They financed the state by the sale of tropical timber and iron ore to French companies of the type that had played such a key role in creating the colony in the first place.
