French West Africa (French: Afrique occidentale française, AOF) is part of the French Union in north west Africa. It borders in the north with Western Sahara, Algeria and Libya, French Equatorial Africa to the west, to the southwest Nigeria. In the 1930s the policy of assimilation was considered by the colonial lobby and some groups has an insufficient means to keep French rule. Critical voices from an emerging African middle class where also emerging. The social republican government, headed by François de La Rocque changed the policy of assimilation to association within the French Union.