The ABCDs of the Colonial Pact
A 2019 essay examines the Franco-Cameroonian colonial pact signed in 1959, tracing how France secured control over Cameroon's mineral wealth, currency, and economic policy through agreements negotiated by French citizens rather than Cameroonians. The writer catalogs the pact's terms, its renewal, and the fates of African leaders who resisted French economic dominance.
A lot of you may have heard about the colonial pact between France and its former colonies, probably over some passionate discussion or just in passing. Some may know about it but not exactly how it came about, how it was negotiated and what it entails exactly. Well, we thank the gods for PoiseSocial on days like this.
I’d have loved to be elaborate and do a three-part series on the whole thing, but in all honesty, the whole saga is so nauseating that I rather write a short article that quickly explains the fundamentals and the consequences. What you choose to do with the info and how you to choose to feel about it is entirely up to you.
THE A: The Colonial Pact was signed close to 60 years ago on December 26th, 1959. It was signed between Ahidjo and the French. Here’s the funny part; Cameroonians themselves were basically not part of the negotiations. The two men who negotiated on behalf of Cameroon were…hold onto your hats… French citizens! Their names are Jacques Rousseau and Georges Becquey. If that isn’t madness, then I don’t know what it is. Tyrion Lannister once said, “the history of the world is written by men drinking wine in elegant boardrooms.” In our case, it was written by 6 French men drinking champagne.
THE B: The accord, inter alia, stipulated that in exchange for military protection from France, our nations had to inform France of our policies with regards to our minerals and other raw products. We also had to prioritise the French army with regards to raw materials that could be used in producing warfare products. And if necessary we had to limit exportation to other countries. Cameroon also had to prioritise the sale of its precious raw materials to France and had to prioritise France when it had to import finished products and even raw materials. According to the accord, a number of “strategic” minerals discovered in Cameroon’s soil belonged de facto to France. These included, notably, hydrocarbons, uranium, natural gas, lithium, and some others.
The crafty guys, worried that future useful minerals might be discovered in the future that they didn’t know about then, slid a clause into the accords that stipulated that the list of minerals could be updated. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t just what was under our soil, but also what was above it that “belonged” to France. Cocoa, Coffee, rubber, bananas, tea… all these cash crops. This all happened when the contract was renewed in 1974. New accords were signed between Biya and Sarkozy in 2009.
THE C: The letter C here could stand for ‘culminate’ because all of this has culminated into the economic leash which they use to hold us, the CFA francs. Our currency was backed by the French franc and our money is printed in France. Former French colonies still pay a colonial tax to France today. As a matter of fact, all her colonies pay an annual 400 Billion euros into the French treasury! We are basically bankrolling the French economy.
D: D might as well, stand for death because every African leader that has stood against France and its imperialist suck-me-dry policies has met either death or some unplanned end. It started with Mali when Modibo Keita was ousted by a coup. Then there was Sylvanus Olympio that was pushed away by the Gnassigbe Eyadema dynasty. You can add David Dacko of C.A.R and Maurice Yameogo of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, Ahmad Abdallah of Comores too. Laurent Gbagbo and Muammar Qaddafi are also victims.
If you look to the hills and wonder where your help comes from, it comes from the Lord. If you look to those very hills and wonder where your troubles come from, wonder no more.
- Wandji Wilfred for #PoiseHistory.
Written a decade into Cameroon's political present, the piece speaks to a moment of growing critical examination of Franco-African relations and the historical mechanisms of economic dependency that persist long after formal independence. It reflects broader pan-African discourse around neocolonialism and resource extraction.
The essay makes legible a structure of dependency that shapes Cameroon's present—from currency to raw material exports—by tracing its explicit contractual origins rather than treating it as inevitable. Its catalog of deposed leaders, however provocative, registers a real historical pattern of instability among African states that resisted French interests, and that pattern remains central to understanding contemporary African political risk and sovereignty debates.