Africa is not a continent. It is much wider and much more diverse than a simple continent. It is home to probably the most socially and culturally devastated societies. Despite the terrible quagmire created by the colonial period, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), created in 1963, has had the wisdom to establish a golden rule to preserve peace and stability on the African continent: Frontiers inherited from the colonial period will not be challenged.In that sense, it is pertinent to underline that African leaders back in the 1960s had a much better take on international relations than, say, Putin and his administration. However, the "independence" of previous African colonies was most of the time carried out rather peacefully without important independence wars against the colonizers (with the notable exceptions of Algeria, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Kenya). The whole structure remained unchanged, only a transfer of power took place among the colony elites and the local elites.This evolution has led to failed state structures and bloody internal strife in the aftermath of independence. A complete economic dependence vis-à-vis former colonial powers did not help the situation. In spite of a number of visionary leaders like Hamilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara and Julius Nyerere, the majority of African ruling elites could not root out corruption and nepotism when they were not instigating it.Former colonial power relations with African countries have always been impregnated with tension and hatred, difficult to surmount on either side. Challengers like the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 80s did not fare any better. The war in Angola turned into a proxy war between the U.S. and the USSR, costing thousands of lives and a totally destroyed administration and infrastructure in this ancient Portuguese colony, an immense territory in Southern Africa. Humanitarian assistance systems were also deemed totally inefficient, as denounced by a number of European sociologists like Jean Ziegler.In the 1990s, the Soviets disappeared and European countries established a system of conditionality for the humanitarian aid, and probing results started to blossom. At this juncture, China, as an emerging economic power in dire need of raw materials, entered the game by allocating credits and loans to regimes without conditions. Not only has this totally thrown off balance the conditional support system, but climate change has for the last 20 years delocalized millions of farmers already living in precarious conditions. The latest attack by Boko Haram in Nigeria is not due to the resurgence of a "primitive" Islamism, but the continuation of a 20-year uprising in northern Nigeria under a new banner.Turkey is perhaps the most recent player in Africa, where the absence of a colonial past (no one remembers Ottoman rule in North Africa or Sudan) coupled with its motivation to be a regional power has helped establish a good image and some important strongholds, especially in failed states like Somalia.Turkey is likely to become an ideal target for Islamist insurgent movements so long as it espouses a totally "modern" country structure, where a political elite drawing on "Islamic" references came to power democratically and remained in power for the last 12 years. In addition, Turkey does not really need African natural resources, nor does it have the capacity to become a military power. Turkey is hard to define from a purely anticolonial perspective and in that sense is even more threatening than old colonial Powers. The attack on the Turkish Embassy in Mogadishu has already shown that local terrorist movements understand this construction. Going forward, it will be much more difficult for Turkey to establish peaceful and politically disconnected relations West African countries in particular. Our first opening toward Africa has been a successful one, but it has reached its limit. The next step will be more difficult to manage.