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Updated: 12 Jul 2003

French Lessons in Africa (Peter Biddlecombe, 1993)

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ISBN 0-349-10509-X

Further Reading By the Same Author A Nice Time Being Had By All Faster, They're Gaining Similar Writing Remote Journeys, Oddly Rendered - Tim Cahill What The Traveller Saw - Eric Newby

As far as I know, this is the first of Biddlecombe's popular series of travel books and I found it to be the best of those I've read so far.  Rather than continually striving after laughs, a characteristic which compromises his later books – presumably trying to live up to the expectation created by this one – he writes naturally, fluently, confidently and, above all, informatively.  Whereas you will learn very little worthwhile about Tbilisi from A Nice Time Being Had By All, you will learn a great deal about francophone Africa from reading French Lessons in Africa.

For example, in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) we learn of yet another example of the old, familiar African tragedy ... people dying needlessly, in the midst of potential wealth:

'Many children were so hungry they could no longer eat. They actually refused the food they needed to survive as if they had forgotten what eating and drinking was about. The extremest form off anorexia, it begins by the time a baby is six months old.  If by then they have not received enough goodness and minerals and vitamins either naturally or artificially they are vulnerable. There is nothing anybody can do.  They just wither away and die.  Yet Burkina has resources: gold at Poura, antimony at Malatou, marble at Tiara, zinc and silver at Perkoa, manganese at Tamboogo and phosphate at Kodkari.   It is also a major producer of mangoes, green peas and Irish potatoes.'
– p. 54

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The root cause of famine is not – repeat not – a lack of food; it is bad government.  And bad government, corrupt, incompetent,  motivated by tribalism and discredited ideologies, is something Africa has aplenty.  As P.J. O'Rourke notes in All the Trouble in the World, it is pretty hard to call to mind a modern democracy where the people starve.  And equally hard to think of a centrally controlled state in which they haven't.  But back to the book.

In the Côte d'Ivoire we hear:

'"They've thought of that.  The last thing an African country wants is people saying they are dependent on France.  They you don't mind people thinking it because if that's the price of security, it's a small price.  But they don't want people saying it.  So the French put their soldiers into the uniform of the African country.   Voilà!  They've avoided embarrassment and have boosted the strength and capability of the African army.  Everybody's happy.  It's the perfect French solution."

"But who do they takes their orders from?"

"From Paris, of course.  Once a Frenchman always a Frenchman."'
– p. 188

He goes on to suggest that Mitterand had French advisers helping Argentina throughout the Falklands war.  Frankly, I wouldn't put it past them for a moment.

Or ...

'Wander along the banks of the river Niger.  To me that above all is fabulous because in the middle of the desert the last thing I imagined seeing was a full, flowing, vibrant, colourful river. I'm not a river freak. I've no plans to do a Jonathan Raban down the Mississippi.  But the Niger is different. Other rivers may be brown gods; this one is a rich, golden goddess. At Akka it opens out into Lake Debo, with its sand castle houses and mosques and salesman who swim out to sell you their wares. It's so big you cannot see the other side.'
– p. 250

That excerpt is from the chapter on Mali.  In ten chapters Biddlecombe writes about Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Zaire although each country often seems to overflow into its neighbouring chapters.   Appropriately, perhaps.

However, to me, the Côte d'Ivoire chapter was the most interesting; it was where most of my little scraps of paper marking interesting passages seemed to be clustered when I finished the book.  In some ways it – certainly the chapter and maybe the country as well – seems to sum up much that is hopeful and much of what is simultaneously wrong and sinister about Africa.  I'll leave you with two short, illustrative passages:

'Although he looks – and is – so conventional, to me Houphouet-Boigny is the true revolutionary.  For while other francophone leaders were preaching Marxist-Leninism or flirting with Kim Il Sung, he alone stood against the tide and insisted that the only way to develop was was French aid, French money, French people.   And in one of the poorest regions of the world Houphouet-Boigny has turned a backwater ... into one of the most modern countries in Africa with a staggering average income of over US$1000 per capita.  An amazing 20 percent of its budget is devoted to education with literacy at 60 percent, double the average for Africa.'
– p. 201

Well, that's nice, but what about...

'Felix Houphouet-Boigny, The No. 1 Peasant, le Vieux, le Sage, has been the president of Côte d'Ivoire for nearly thirty years.'
– p. 200

Brrr.  Unesco Peace Prize notwithstanding, it freezes my bones.

Recommendation:  Highly recommended.

Look and Feel:  Thick paperback.

Out-Take.

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