Elf and TotalFina: The end of a very African affair


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Issue 17 - 02 Aug 1999
Whatever the final outcome of TotalFina’s swoop on its French rival Elf Aquitaine, the two groups look destined to come together to form Africa’s greatest oil producer and a counter to Anglo-Saxon oil industry dominance. The impact could be considerable, especially south of the Sahara. In a too often marginalised continent, the African press tends to Africanise global stories; but this story really does have a distinct African flavour: no company has played African politics like Elf, most notably in the Gulf of Guinea oil economies where it has proved as much an instrument of proto-Gaullist policy towards Africa as Légionnaires on ‘policing’ missions or the legendary Foccart networks.

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