Not directly related (nor 100% true), but a friend of mine once remarked about the colony-rank guide:

The reason for this is subtle.

The English method of "control" was to institute law education and court systems. Then English companies would engage in contracts with colony....and since their law system shared a common base, it made business possible

Spanish Method used the Church as the main method of control....with some less amount of success but still successful.

French/Belgian method was straight-up Might Makes Right and they just took what they wanted.

Having Russians there won’t end well for them, unfortunately. We have the saying: Where the Russian plants his foot, no grass grows.

France has its faults, but her credit, she has done a lot of good things on the continent, same as the British.

Russia? NO, thanks.

Here is an alternative viewpoint: The colonisation of the continent was a period where native Africans experienced social mobility on a large scale, for the first time, thanks to an unprecedented economic boom, made possible by modern institutions, health care, governance etc, and, more importantly, the presence of millions of European settlers, who emigrated to the continent to take advantage of the many opportunities. As a result, many African countries in the 60s had GDPs rivaling with those of South Korea, Vietnam, Singapour etc! And the CFA contributed to it. Is it perfect? Of course not. Its it still justified? It's complicated.

Please remember that no African country is forced to adopt it. Many have left the monetary union in the past, e.g. Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Mali (temporarily), Guinea etc. Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, joined it. The Comores Islands have different agreements with France, their CFA has a different peg to the euro. My point is, there are options, including the option to leave. But why don't we leave, if we're not forced to stay? Because it is clearly the lesser of two evils. Look at Nigeria, Zimbabwe, DRC, Egypt. You see my point? The CFA is relatively immune to the kind of devaluation common to most native African currencies. Its a choice. Perfect, I don't know, and probably not, but it's justified.

What has Russia done in Africa? She infiltrated the continent during the cold War, trained charismatic leaders to Marxism with the mission to spread their toxic ideology. As a result, you had greed, civil (independence) wars, millions of the European settlers were forced out (please look up "the coffin or the luggage"). Those settlers lived together, side by side with Africans on the continent, they traded with them, went to the same schools etc.

I see the same scenario playing out today, and I'm not optimistic at all...

Bitcoin can help the continent, but the underlying narrative to support it is extremely biased.

Every empire comes to an end, anti-French sentiment in Africa has been growing for a long time, but, when these people emigrate to another country, France seems to be their first destination, it's ironic, isn't it?

This is basically true, yes. the French keep an overlord status over the currencies of these countries through the CFA, and this is one of the major sources of French wealth. It used to be pegged to the French Franc and, after the end of the century, then to the Euro, strictly, but overvalued. That means, like other Euro countries, these countries have no monetary sovereignty and lack policy options to align budgetary and monetary policies. (The same thing sunk Greece.) The fact that it was overvalued made their resources horrendously expensive and ensured that they would only flow to France, which could print their money to buy it, ensuring raw material flow to France. At the same time, these countries are forced to hold at least 50% of their foreign reserves in Franc (and now Euro), strengthening the status of that currency on the world market and, of course, gains them those reserves.

The Duran podcast is a goldmine for people interested in this kind of stuff. I remember episodes they did on this subject.

I wouldn't underestimate the influence of French, but it's certainly possible that it could decline. Maybe over the course of a decade?