France will take centre stage Thursday at the inauguration of Mali's new president Ibrahim BoubacarKeita (pictured), as the former French colony enters a new era of democracy after months of political chaos.
The event at the 55,000-seat March 26 Stadium in the capital Bamako will include leaders from a host of African countries.
Idriss Deby of Chad, the Ivory Coast's Alassane Ouattara and Moroccan king Mohammed VI are prominent guests among 26 heads of state invited to welcome Mali's new leader, elected by a landslide on August 11.
But the ceremony will hold most significance for French President Francois Hollande, who launched a military action in January, aided by African troops, which ousted Islamist groups linked to Al-Qaeda who had occupied northern Mali last year.
France's engagement in Mali, however, is more nuanced and less straightforward than a simple mission to free the former colony from the clutches of Islamism.
And in many senses Thursday's ceremony marks a beginning rather than an end to French involvement.
French engagement only just beginning
"Given French strategic interests in the region – from uranium mining, or oil and gas exploration by French companies in the Sahel, the prospects of oil exploration in northern Mali itself, and protecting France's broader political interests in west Africa," said Manji Cheto, a London-based analyst with the Africa Practice think-tank in a recent blog post, "it would reasonable to assume that Paris had never intended the troop withdrawal to mark an end to its engagement in Mali."
Although France never officially backed a candidate in the presidential election, most analysts in Bamako believed it was cheering on Keita's rival Soumaila Cisse, a committed "Francophile".
Paris will now be relying on Keita, its second choice to back its interests in the region, by making good on his pledge to unite Mali and end endemic corruption in the deeply-divided West African nation.
"I want to reconcile hearts and minds, restore true brotherhood between us so that all the different people can play their part harmoniously in the national symphony," Keita, 68, said.
The return to democracy has been praised by Hollande, who will be accompanied by four senior ministers and is expected to hold talks with Keita on security, reconciliation, economic recovery and the fight against corruption.
North remains unstable
The ever-present issue of instability was thrown into sharp relief on Sunday when youths affiliated with Mali's main Tuareg separatist group tried to stop a plane carrying three ministers from landing in their northern bastion of Kidal, throwing rocks at their convoy.
The attack followed an exchange of gunfire between the Malian army and "bandits" during security operations near the Mauritanian border last week that left two soldiers wounded, according to security sources.
The incidents "came as a useful reminder that, in the coming weeks, the authorities will have to deal with people who have in the past demonstrated unpredictable behaviour and did not hesitate to openly play one-upmanship," said analyst Gaoussou Drabo in a commentary for the national daily newspaper L'Essor (Progress).
He warned that the "excessive behaviour" demonstrated by marginalised populations in the north could well spill over into more general, and violent, discontent unless Keita urgently addressed the flagging economy and the poverty experienced by ordinary Malians.
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