Two French presidents, one serving (Nicolas Sarkozy), one retired (Jacques Chirac), a foreign minister (Bernard Kouchner), plus a clutch of current and former ministers and other dignitaries. The weight of the French delegation that flew from Paris to Libreville for the funeral on June 16th of Omar Bongo Ondimba, Africa's longest-serving leader and object of a big corruption case in France, reflects the close-knit ties the country has kept with leaders of former African colonies, however unsavoury. But did so many French bigwigs go to Gabon to praise what they like to call françafrique — or to bury it, along with Mr Bongo?

Before his election in 2007 Mr Sarkozy promised to loosen France's complicit bonds to African leaders, calling them "networks of a bygone era". French-African ties, he argued, needed to be more transparent and less personal, based on respect not paternalism. The post-colonial web of petrodollars, political influence and business contracts, which linked French leaders of both left and right to their African counterparts, had come to discredit France. This was starkly exposed during the 2002-03 corruption trial involving Elf-Aquitaine, an oil company, in which several French bosses were jailed. An echo from that era could be heard recently when one former French president, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, accused another, Mr Chirac, of receiving party finance from Mr Bongo in 1981 - a charge that Mr Chirac emphatically denies.

Mr Sarkozy had other reasons to reconsider France's Africa policy. Thanks to its permanent military bases on the continent (see map) and longstanding bilateral defence accords with many ex-colonies, France has often sought to play the role of regional gendarme. It still has 1,350 troops in Chad, where they were the largest part of a European Union force, sent in largely to support the army against rebels and to protect refugees from Darfur. Yet France is not enjoying the return it once did from its peacekeeping. Commercially it faces Chinese competition: China has overtaken France as sub-Saharan Africa's top trading partner. So France has been picking up the security tab and getting a bad press, but losing out on both business and credibility.

... contd.