Africa: “They know I know everything” – My life in Françafrique, Robert Bourgi, interviews with Frédéric Lejeal

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PARIS, France, September 10, 2024/ — A herald of Françafrique, Robert Bourgi discusses, for the very first time in a book, his life, his relationship with his mentor Jacques Foccart and the sensitive missions he carried out over forty years on behalf of French-speaking African presidents and French politicians, including right-wing leaders: from Jacques Chirac to Nicolas Sarkozy, via Dominique de Villepin, Claude Guéant and François Fillon, as well as Omar Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, Abdoulaye Wade, Laurent Gbagbo, Mobutu Sese Seko and Blaise Compaoré.

With a wealth of detail, he reveals a wealth of previously unpublished information. The modus operandi for transporting millions in cash to the RPR and UMP from 1981 to 2007. The visit of Malian marabouts to Jacques Chirac on the eve of the 2005 presidential election. The “cleaning” of Jacques Foccart’s apartment and his famous “Charlotte” villa in Luzarches a few days after his death in March 1997. The financing of Laurent Gbagbo for candidate Chirac in 2002. The purchase by Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaoré of objets d’art for Dominique de Villepin, and the appointment of French ambassadors to Africa and a director of the French Development Agency are just a few examples.

With its many photos and appendices, this documentary book is a unique and rare testimony to Franco-African relations.

Robert Bourgi, born in Dakar in 1945, is a Franco-Lebanese lawyer, lobbyist and political advisor. With a doctorate in public law, this former teacher was in charge of relations with Africa at Club 89, an influential RPR think tank, before becoming the main cog in the transfer of funds from several African palaces and Lebanese communities in Africa to the political formations of the Gaullist right.

Frédéric Lejeal, a political scientist by training, has been a journalist specializing in Africa for twenty-five years. For ten years, he directed La Lettre du Continent, a confidential publication on politics and business networks in West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea. His latest book, Le déclin franco-africain, was published in 2022 by L’Harmattan.

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