laststandonzombieisland

While France was a big player in East vs West counter-insurgency wars in Africa throughout the Cold War including the twin disasters of the Algerian Wars and the Suez intervention, the Toyota Wars in Chad against Libya, Ethiopia/Somalia, and the Horn of Africa (remember, Djibouti was the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas until 1978 and the country still has 2,000 troops there) the nightmare that was the Congo and Biafra, Kolwezi in 1978, the Gambian coup response in 1981, et. al. They were also on the periphery of the South African/Rhodesian efforts in the 1970s-80s as well, being one of the few countries to ignore the general weapon embargoes on those apartheid states. 

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, France kept up its self-imposed Gendarme d’Afrique role, enforcing the way things should be as seen by Paris, overturning the repeated mercenary coups by Bob Denard, still mixing it up in Libya, sending troops to the Central African Republic (which saw no less than eight French interventions since 1960), being involved in a simmering 20-year conflict in the Ivory Coast, the forever war of the continued Operation Barkhane saga in Mali, and in Burkina Faso. 

Regarding the latter two, Russia seems to be increasingly pushing the French out for assorted reasons. The below from AJ: