The Fashoda syndrome has shaped French attitudes to prevent Commonwealth influence in French-speaking countries, believing their interests to be mutually-exclusive.
In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, during which France and the United Kingdom's interests in the Middle East aligned, it was proposed by French Prime Minister Guy Mollet that France and the UK create a Franco-British Union, with common citizenship and Queen Elizabeth II as head of state.
[2] Nonetheless, La Francophonie spends ten times as much money per inhabitant as the Commonwealth (€0.30 cf.
[2] Twelve countries are full members of both La Francophonie and the Commonwealth (Cameroon, Canada, Cyprus, Dominica, Gabon, Ghana, Mauritius, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, Togo and Vanuatu) and Mozambique is an observer.
[1] In the wake of the genocide there, Francophonie member Rwanda has made recent moves away from France's sphere of influence, has replaced French with English as an official language, and joined the Commonwealth at the 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.