They know, i know everything

My life in the eye of relationship between france and africa

Frédéric Lejeal, Robert Bourgi

496 pages, parution le 04/11/2024

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Résumé

In the true secrets of Françafrique

A key figure in French Africa, Robert Bourgi, for the first time ever in a book, discusses his life, his relationship with his mentor Jacques Foccart and all the "missions" he undertook over almost forty years, on behalf of African and French presidents, including the leading lights of the Right (Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, Charles Pasqua, Jacques Toubon, Dominique de Villepin, Claude Guéant, François Fillon etc.). He reveals the financing networks of French political parties, based on his personal notes that he kept for 40 years. He also describes the sensitive cases in which he was involved-the liberation of French journalists from Lebanon in the 1980s; rehabilitation of Mobutu Sese Seko; the liberation of the French hostage, Clothilde Reiss, in Iran; the rescue of Laurent Gbagbo; the resignation of Jean-Marie Bockel; the appointment of French ambassadors to Africa; his lobbying of the Élysée Palace on behalf of African heads of state. From Félix Houphouët-Boigny and Laurent Gbagbo (Ivory Coast) to
Mobutu Sese Seko (DR Congo), via Blaise Compaoré (Burkina Faso), Mathieu Kérékou (Benin), Abdoulaye Wade and Macky Sall (Senegal), Mohamed ould Abdel Aziz (Mauritania) and Gnassingbé Eyadéma (Togo), Pascal Lissouba, Denis Sassou Nguesso (Congo), and above all Omar and Ali Bongo (Gabon), this book throws light on the psychology of numerous presidents, south of the Sahara, and their regimes, giving the reader a fresh look at France's African policy over several decades.

Robert Bourgi, born April 4, 1945 in Dakar, is a Franco-Lebanese lawyer and political advisor. A specialist in African affairs, he is considered a leading exponent of French Africa. For thirty years, he personified the relations between France and its former sub-Saharan colonies, heir to the mythical Gaullist Jacques Foccart.

A political scientist by training, Frédéric Lejeal has been an Africajournalist for twenty-five years. A former contributor to the business magazines Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens and Jeune Afrique, he spent ten years running La Lettre du Continent, a leading confidential publication on politics and business networks in West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea.