Macron says France will close its regular military bases in Africa

President Emmanuel Macron said France will end its practice of hosting regular military bases in Africa, during a speech ahead of a tour of African countries starting on Wednesday.

He said France will instead set up bases or "academies" to be co-run by French and African armies. He said there would be a notable fall in French military personnel but an increase in an effort to provide training and equipment.

"The bases as they exist now are a heritage from the past," he told reporters at the Elysee palace in Paris two days before flying to Gabon, the first country of a tour that will also take him to nations that were not former French colonies, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"These bases will not be closed but re-organised," he said, adding that the new bases or "academies" will start to gradually be "africanised" and ran in conjunction with African and European partners.

The tour comes just over a week after Burkina Faso booted out French troops and ended a military accord that allowed France to fight insurgents in the West African nation, becoming the latest African country to reject Paris' help.

France withdrew its forces from Mali last year after the junta there started working with Russian military contractors.

Russia's Wagner Group has also deployed in the Central African Republic, prompting fears of a domino effect in Paris at a time Western countries are trying to lobby the global south against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

Macron said he was "proud" of France's military record in Mali, and would not allow the country to be made a scapegoat for a worsening of the security situation in the Sahel, where Islamists insurgents have made progress.

"France's role is not to fix all the problems in Africa," he said.

Macron also said that African nations would eventually stop turning to the Wagner Group as they would see that it only sows misery.

"It's a group of criminal mercenaries, the life insurance of failing regimes and putschists," he said.