Jacques Foccart

Jacques Foccart (31 August 1913 – 19 March 1997) was a French businessman and politician, best known as a chief adviser to French presidents on African affairs. He also co-founded in 1959 with Charles Pasqua the Gaullist Service d'Action Civique (SAC), which specialized in covert operations in Africa.

From 1960 to 1974, Foccart was Secretary-General for African and Malagasy Affairs under Presidents Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou, and was pivotal in maintaining France's sphere of influence in sub-Saharan Africa (or Françafrique) by putting in place a series of cooperation accords with individual African countries and building a dense web of personal networks that underpinned the informal and family-like relationships between French and African leaders. After de Gaulle, Foccart was seen as the most influential man of the Fifth Republic. But through SAC, he was considered to be involved in various coups d'état in Africa during the 1960s. Nevertheless, Foccart retained his functions during Georges Pompidou's presidency (1969–74).

In 1974, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing replaced Foccart with the young deputy whom he had himself trained. He was then rehabilitated in 1986 by the new Prime minister Jacques Chirac as an adviser on African affairs for the two years of "cohabitation" with socialist president François Mitterrand. When Chirac finally gained the presidency in 1995, the 81-year-old Foccart was brought back to the Elysée palace as an advisor. He died in 1997. According to the international affairs magazine The National Interest, "Foccart was said to have been telephoning African personalities on the subject of Zaire right up to the week before his death."