France has been kicked out in two more Africa countries

I'm joined on set by a French politics editor, Mark Perelman. Mark, first of all, how much of a surprise or not is this announcement in Senegal? In Senegal, it's not so much of a surprise. Clearly, there were question marks. A few months ago, the Prime Minister, Ousmane Sonko, had said that, you know, France shouldn't have military bases in Senegal forever. That clearly this is an issue of sovereignty. The President, whom we saw in that report, then came here to Paris. He met with the French President, directly. Do you still want our military presence? And the Senegalese President said, well, we have to think about it. Clearly, they thought about it and they've decided that this is the end of the military presence in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. It doesn't come so much of a surprise also because Macron has designated an envoy, Jean-Marie Bockel, to figure out the new military presence in four African countries, including Senegal. And he traveled to three of those countries, except one, Senegal. He said that it was because there were elections there, but clearly, it's also because he was probably not welcome. And today we have the answers. The French soldiers will have to leave. We don't know exactly when, but now this has been set in motion. The base in Dakar will shut down in the foreseeable future. Now, Chad has also put an end to the defense partnership with France. This is considered a quite a historic turning point for the country, isn't it? Absolutely. This is indeed a surprise. This is not what the French authorities were working on. Jean-Marie Bockel, whom I just mentioned, was in charge. He had said a few months ago, of course, France will stay in terms of military presence. We need to stay. And there had been discussions about reducing the number of French troops, also about possibly keeping French, France has not only one base, but it has three military bases in the country. And the idea was to have fewer soldiers, but to remain present in those three different areas. And the French were quite optimistic that there would be a solution. And so the fact that the Chadian authorities have decided that this is the end and that the soldiers will have to leave, we don't know exactly when, came really as a surprise. And maybe I should add a humiliation also, because the French Foreign Minister was in charge and he met with his counterparts, they made a statement together. And so, a few hours after he left, Chad issued a statement saying, this is the end of the defense agreement. The Foreign Minister then said, this is not like in the Sahel, we're not kicking the French out. We'll make sure we discuss how we proceed. But this is a really historical break because Chad is the country in Africa where France has intervened militarily the most. I mean, they've been there for decades and they were counting on this because whereas in Gabon, in Senegal, in Ivory Coast, the presence is more symbolic than anything else. In Chad, it's strategic because it's a region close to Sudan, close to the Republic of Central Africa, and Chad has also been active in fighting jihadist groups. So the French were really counting on this from a strategic standpoint, so it's really bad news for Paris and certainly not something they were waiting for.