TITLE: FRANCOPHONE SUB-SAHARA AFRICA 1880-1995

AUTHOR: PATRICK MANNING

PUBLISHER: UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, CB2 2RU, UNITED KINGDOM, 1999

PAGES: 247

PRICE: NOT STATED

REVIEWER: KOFI AKOSAH-SARPONG in Ottawa, Canada.

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For long, long time many an anglophone African has known or read little about francophone Africa and vice versa. But as this re-issued book with its new two chapters on democratisation movements of the 1980s and 1990s and the Francophone movement and the crisis in Rwanda and Burundi and the new editor of the London, United Kingdom-based prestigious weekly English language "WEST AFRICA" magazine Mr. Adama Gaye has been demonstrating in his recent reportages on Francophone Africa each of the language divide in Africa is increasingly reading from the other language divide.

An African multi-lingual mass communication is on the prowl, bluring the long, long communication divide in the Africa, as trans-border mass communication cements the language divide and create a new Africa consciousness shaped by Africa-centred mass communication in the age globalisation. Behold a new Africa, an African Renaissance.

Patrick Manning, an established Northeastern University in Boston Francophile in discussing the history and social movement of Francophone Africa in this new book adds new chapters on this regions democratisation movements of the 1980s and 1990s as France redefines its place in these parts of Africa. A case in point is France refusing to intervene in the recent Cote d'Ivoire coup detat.

Manning includes here the deeper historical origin of Africa's intractable problem-child states like Rwanda and Burundi and how African heritage shaped Francophone societies, in interaction with French and Belgium colonial regulations beefed up by global economic and cultural forces.

Manning indicates that French-speaking Africa covers 10 million square kilometres which is 40 per cent of the area of sub-Sahara, or 35 percent of the area of the entire African continent. There are 17 Francophone countries in Africa with a population of 100 million, or one-fifth of the entire African population.

Excluded here are 40 percent of anglophone African states which houses Africa’s largest and most populous countries such as Nigeria and Sudan including the rich South Africa; and the 20 percent of the remaining North African states which are mainly Arabs. However, the remaining 4 percent are Portuguese-speaking nations like Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissua and Equitorial Guinea.

This puts Franco-phone Africa in the forefront of Africa's development and history in the contemporary battle to reposition the continent's development through its culture and history. Despite this Manning indicates that some African Franco-phone states rides side by side with English, French and Arabic including their native African languages.

In terms of the "African Renaissance" development paradigm Franco-phone African has to search how they will relate their long, long fusion with the French culture with African culture in the larger game of Africa's development.

A further read of Manning's book reveals that the Francophones are so imbedded in French culture and tradition that in the current context of "African Renaissance" they look some how unreleaseable in the contempoary battle to reborn Africa culturely in the battle to regenerate the continent in the global development game.

But recent developments in Africa such as the crises in Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo Republic, Senegal's Cassamance and the new millennium coup in Cote d'Ivoire reveal that Paris is not only informed by Africa's culture but has being positioning itself to let continental Africa handle Africa's problem, as French President Jacque Chirac told an audience last year in Congo-Brazaville for African colour to inform Africa's democracy and overall development.