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Well it's very simple, France may have left Africa, but their former colonies are still very much colonised in many ways: for example, go to Francophone Africa and you will be hard pressed to find any American or British firms there. Many former French colonies in Africa use a currency, the CFA Franc, which is issued in France. Many of their elites go to the same schools in France which teach them how to administer their countries as effectively as...France. That's why.

I could go into the legacy of forced labour in the French Congo as well, but that's a discussion for another time.

Regards, Ivan

Excerpted from Chapter 11 of Philip Gourevitch's book, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright 1998 by Philip Gourevitch. All rights reserved.

Throughout the late '80s and early '90s, Rwanda's Hutu Power dictatorship had enjoyed the patronage of France. As a former Belgian colony, Rwanda was a French speaking country, and Paris's neo-colonial policy in Africa was to support those who spoke its language at all costs. In the early '90s, when Rwanda was plunged into civil war between the Hutu government, and the predominantly Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandese Patriotic Front, France threw its military support behind the Hutu regime. After all, the RPF came out of Uganda--where its leaders had been living in exile--and Uganda is an English speaking country. French leaders were unconcerned by their murderous Hutu Power clients. As the genocide reached its peak in the early summer of 1994, France's President François Mitterand was reported to say, "In such countries as this, genocide is not too important." Sadly, by their actions and inactions during the Rwandan slaughter, the rest of the world's great powers signaled that they agreed.