HOW BRITAIN HAS LOST TO FRANCE

This article is a reaction to a post Dr. N.N. Susungi posted on Facebook to the effect that the British Empire is shrinking. I have this to say:

I really wish it perished. The British have never cared about us. They basically exploited what the Germans left but at the time of their departure, what legacy did they leave behind? When the then CDC was advertised for sale after the Germans left, the British did not even bother to bid to buy it. Another point is that usually when a Cameroonian (even of English expression) visits Britain today, British people say "You come from Cameroon? So you speak French?" So, as far as they know, Cameroon is “French-speaking”. They do not even seem to know they have a past in the country. They have surrendered their heritage in Cameroon to the French.

And by the way, while Britain is nonchalant, France is making inroads into its territory. When I was a student in France, Nigeria (an Anglophone country) was one of the African countries with the largest number of students in France. And many of them were on French government scholarship! France has invested heavily in Nigeria. Nigeria has also made French its second official language.

Trade figures released in 1986 showed that in that year Nigeria (an Anglophone country) bought more goods from France than any other country in Sub-Saharan Africa. The figures also showed that in the same year, France sold more goods to Nigeria than to any other country in Black Africa.

France has not only stopped at that. It has integrated Equatorial Guinea (Spanish speaking) and Guinea Bissau (Portuguese Speaking) in the Franc zone. When I visited Malabo (Equatorial Guinea) as a journalist in 1991, I was received by the Minister of State in Charge of Foreign Affairs of that country. I asked him whether Spain did not frown at the increasing presence of France in his country. He told me that, frankly, what his country had gained from France in a period of ten years, it had not obtained that from Spain since independence. He went on to affirm that if they were to choose between the two countries, they would choose France.

From my own personal experience, I can testify to French “largesse”. After I finished my studies in France in the 1980s, I was informed that France together with other European Union countries had an agreement by which each year; each country recruited some native speakers and sent them to the other countries to support the teaching of their language. When I asked whether I could apply, I was told that since I came from a “French-speaking country” I should feel free to put in my application. I did. At the time, I had trained as a French teacher in Besancon (France) and studied and graduated from the School of Translators and Interpreters in Lille (France). I will tell you who sponsored me in that school in a different post.

Together with native French applicants, I was subjected to screening. I passed the test and was one of those the French government recruited in that year and sent out to other countries to teach French as native speakers. Some of the countries included Germany, Portugal, Italy, England, Scotland, and Wales. I was sent to England. Once you were sent to a host country, the country posted you either to a university or a college. I was posted to the Aylestone High School in Kilburn (North London) where I taught French alongside other Language Assistants who had come from Germany and Spain. In other words, I was the “French ambassador” to that school. I had the option to apply for French nationality. But I did not do so, for personal reasons. I recount that story just to prove the point that whereas the French could very easily recruit me because I came from one of “their” countries, the British on the other hand, would hesitate giving such a job to someone who did not have British nationality.

The other point is that at the time I studied in France, the country really did not make any distinction between home students and foreign students when it came to paying tuition fees as such. And in any case, it was not a tuition fee as such. It was only an annual registration fee. But at the same time in Britain, foreign students were asphyxiated with mammoth sums of money. Some French institutions like the school of translation which I attended applied means testing on students and reduced their fees, if the latter could prove they were not from a family that could pay the stipulated amount. This was unthinkable in Britain, as far as I know. Basically, the amount of money that could sponsor one foreign student in Britain could be used to sponsor ten in France.

Another example: when General Ibrahim Babangida was president of Nigeria and fell ill, the French quickly arranged for him to travel to France and get first-class treatment. I understand that they also footed his bill. It would be difficult for the British to do that.