OIF (Organisation internationale de la Francophonie)

The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) is the principal institutional vehicle of La Francophonie, the community of states and governments that use French as a common working or official language. It traces its origin to the Niamey Convention of 20 March 1970, which created the Agence de coopération culturelle et technique (ACCT). The current OIF structure was consolidated by the Charter of the Francophonie, adopted at Hanoi in 1997 and revised at Antananarivo in 2005.

The organization is headquartered in Paris and led by a Secretary-General, a position created at the 1997 Hanoi Summit. Past holders include Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1997–2002), Abdou Diouf (2002–2014), Michaëlle Jean (2014–2018), and Louise Mushikiwabo (since 2019). Its highest body is the Summit of Heads of State and Government (the Sommet de la Francophonie), held biennially, supported by a Ministerial Conference and a Permanent Council.

Membership is tiered into full members, associate members, and observers, and includes states where French is not widely spoken (e.g., Bulgaria, Armenia, Qatar as observer trajectories vary over time). Suspensions have been used as a political tool — for example, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger saw their participation suspended following coups in the early 2020s.

OIF activities focus on:

• Promotion of the French language and linguistic diversity
• Democracy, human rights, and rule of law, framed by the Bamako Declaration (3 November 2000) and the Saint-Boniface Declaration (2006)
• Education, higher education, and digital cooperation, often via operators such as the AUF (Agence universitaire de la Francophonie), TV5Monde, the Université Senghor in Alexandria, and the AIMF (mayors' network)
• Economic cooperation, formalized by the Strategy on Economic Francophonie adopted at the Dakar Summit in 2014

OIF also deploys election observation missions and mediates in political crises in member states, particularly in West and Central Africa.