Understanding the Performance of Anglophone and Francophone Ad Hoc Military Coalitions in Africa

Lecture by Gordon Cumming, Professor of Territorial Studies based on languages at Cardiff University and 2024-2025 research-fellow at the Paris IAS (FIAS Programme), at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne as part of the ‘In Search of Birtain’ seminar.

Presentation

Ad hoc coalitions offer flexible responses to Africa’s security challenges. This paper provides a comparative study of two such African groupings: the Multinational Joint Task Force, an anglophone-led coalition which has endured, and the G5 Sahel Joint Force, an entirely francophone configuration which has collapsed. To explain these divergent outcomes, we begin by assessing and comparing the performance capabilities of these groupings. We then review the ‘classic account’ of their (under)performance, which focuses on the role of external support in sustaining coalitions. Next, we use an organized hypocrisy lens to show how external funding only ensures a coalition’s sustainability where the decoupling between discourse and performance does not become too great. Finally, we ask what the above performance tells us about the backers of these coalitions, particularly Great Britain, whose policy towards Africa has traditionally been marked by benign neglect, and France, whose approach to Africa has typically been characterised as ‘clientelist’ and dependency-generating?