With the sale – still to be finalised – of Bolloré Africa Logistics for €5.7 billion his power in Africa will not diminish, they write, as it shifts from trade to the media. When he goes on trial for corruption in Africa later this year, what they publish here will be what everyone wants to know.
These same networks are now creating new media and digital interests for Bolloré’s companies in Africa -- as well as in France and the world. This is a matter of interest, the authors argue, because Bolloré’s public relations and media enterprises can help Africa’s least democratic countries resist reform.
Bolloré’s commercial interests support undemocratic African elites which monopolise and privatise their country’s resources and prolong their lack of accountability, which the authors explore in the case of the republic of Togo, which one of our sources called ‘Bolloré’s private hunting ground’.
