While "de-colonising" their African colonies in OTL, de Gaulle/France purposefully split them up into intentionally weak "ruritania"-type countries that were extremely economically dependent on the new Fifth Republic in order to continue their exploitation.

The exact scenario doesn't really matter, its completely up to you, but in a scenario where the French colonies gain independence one way or another without this French division strategy being implemented, what countries/borders would be likely to appear?
 
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But if you split them according to ethnic lines, they'll be even smaller and weaker.
That's true, but is division along ethnic lines really the most likely way for new countries to emerge? Most other African countries retained their colonial borders instead of devolving along ethnic lines.
 
Maybe because they've seen that western powers will interfere in cases of e.g. Katanga or Biafra?

It has more to do with the fact that many Africans see themselves in the light of their colonisers. E.g. people from Togoland see themselves as hardworking, unlike the lazy British Colonised africans. This really pronounced in Cameroon.
 
Ruritania is for referring to fictional Eastern European and Balkan states. Understandable that's it would confuse, as Mauritania is the closest sounding real world country name. Anyways, I presume you are thinking of it like a banana republic? There were many attempts by states to unify but those broke down for various reasons. Kind of like how Syria decided to leave the United Arab Republic because they were treated as a junior partner at best, to a new set of Egyptian provinces at worse. And if we decide to go at a tribal or linguistic route, we can find there would still be problems even when groups are similar. The Sawhari people are made up of groups related or those in Mauritania, but certain groups among them still drove them out. Alternatively, you have it where the people of British Togo voted to go with Ghana rather than wait longer for independence, though there was still a split in the vote as some tribes wanted to go with Togo. We can also look at a religious viewpoint with Nigeria and Cameroon. The Muslim north stomped on Christian Biafra, while the third (also Christian) portion did nothing. And for British Cameroons we had the North voting to join their Muslim neighbors in Nigeria, while the sorters portion went to join Christian Cameroon. Religion might be overstated compared to practices in various governments of favor the main tribes, and That regoin I voted to join Cameroon later tried to leave.
 
French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa each gain independence as one country, and it stays that way. Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia gain independence as three countries, as IOTL, but preferably unite under one republic soon after (with the monarchies deposed)--even less likely to happen than united AEF/AOF. French Somaliland is joined to Somalia. Réunion and the Comoros (including Mayotte) become autonomous regions of Madagascar.

This is about as natural of borders as you'll get out of French Africa, which was a rather un-natural creation to begin with. Anything else would be based on yet more arbitrary lines of division (pick a random river, ridge, or line of latitude/longitude) or would cut it into dozens of tiny, rural countries based on ethnic lines (and likely overlapping ethnic groups).
 
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