By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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One evening in late 2015 at the Mail & Guardian Africa office in Nairobi, I got an intriguing call from a consultant friend who was doing some work in Libreville, Gabon’s capital.

He said he was due to meet President Ali Bongo Ondimba in a few days, and the big man had told him he wanted to “speak to Anglophone East Africa” and had asked him if it was possible to get him an interview. A few days later one of our senior writers was in Libreville, and in the company of my friend, at Bongo’s palace.

After the interview, Bongo went into a lengthy discussion with our writer. He wanted to know about the “East African model”. And he interrogated her for a long time about an East African Community country that, our writer said, he “was completely smitten by, and wanted Gabon to be its copy”.

Read: Ali Bongo and the danger of overstaying in power

In June 2022, Bongo took Gabon into the Commonwealth, becoming one of a handful of the bodies’ members not to have been a British colony. Now long past our lives at Mail & Guardian Africa, our writer noted that it was not surprising. His admiration of the “Anglophone East Africa” had been overflowing.

It’s embarrassing to have to debate the differences and similarities between British and French colonialism, and the neo-colonial models that they have spawned.

However, one fiery anti-French West African woman said that the difference is that “France is like the man who, after divorce, moves into the apartment across the corridor from yours. The British are like the man who moves to the next street”.

Still, in a post-colonial context, it’s hard to see the “Anglophone East African model” Bongo spoke of as a definite thing. In any event, he seemed eight years ago to be of the view that the Francophone model had run its course.

On August 30, Bongo’s fears became a nightmare. The army moved in immediately after the results of an election opponents say he stole, had been announced, and deposed him. Bongo, who had taken over from his father in 2009, had been in power for 14 years and the election commission had handed him a third term with 64.27 per cent of the vote. Altogether, the Bongos had ruled Gabon for 56 years.

Read: Gabon soldiers say election result cancelled, 'regime' ended

It’s doubtful Bongo Junior would have had immunity against a coup if Gabon had been in East Africa. It could well be that the coup wave that has swept West Africa – in Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Mali – is spreading to the East and southern Africa, and Gabon could still have been first to fall.

However, if there is an “Anglophone East African model”, then it is easier to define it by what happens in Francophone Central and West Africa, which is unthinkable on the east side.

In early 2022, I went to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, which was secured then by a United Nations peacekeeping force, the Russian Wagner mercenary group, but primarily by a unilateral contingent of the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) which President Faustin-Archange Touadéra had pleaded with to come and save his bacon as rebels were about to overrun his government in early 2021.

Rwandan units in the UN peacekeeping force, held down the Bangui M’Poko International Airport, and threw a protective ring around it whenever planes were landing or taking off. This was partly because it is not fenced, and 'boda boda' riders and the folks of Bangui cut across the runway as a shortcut!

In one corner of the airport, there is a fenced off French zone, into which the authority of the Central African Republic barely extends. French planes land, and taxi into the enclosure to offload and load up their cargo, and even passengers. They taxi out and take off, with only the barest paperwork done through the CAR authorities. The Russians were building a similar zone a short distance away.

It’s hard to even think of a British exclusion zone with that level of autonomy at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, Jomo Kenyatta International in Nairobi, or the Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam.

Bangui sits on the edge of the Ubangi River, the largest right bank tributary of the Congo River in Central Africa. Across is the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Naturally, the poshest suburb and most stately homes in Bangui are off the edge of the Ubangi River. One of the most stately of them, is the residence of the French ambassador just up the hill.

Read: CAR's Touadera: Man of peace or 'President Wagner'?

A lot of CAR history has played out along the street from the French ambassador’s residence to Ubangi River, and over it. I was told that many leaders and prominent figures, including presidents ousted in coups in the past, hightailed it to the residence.

From there, the French embassy would work out the terms of either their surrender or taking them across the river into exile. Many a potential coup maker allegedly also started their journey there, stopping by to seek blessings – or to receive a rejection. This French corridor was not interfered by the “natives”.

This is all very unEast African. And the East African economy, as a market, is very agnostic. The British, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, and others all jockey for deals in State House and the ministry corridors, and on the street, it’s the devil take the hindmost. In Bangui, the French had a monopoly even on packed juice.

The author is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3