In 1897 Bonchamps was appointed to lead a mission from Djibouti across Ethiopia to the River Nile at Fashoda in southern Sudan, to converge with the expedition of Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand coming from Brazzaville with orders to secure the area around Fashoda as a French protectorate.
When one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes' dream) and another line from Dakar to French Somaliland (now Djibouti) by the Red Sea in the Horn (the French ambition), these two lines intersect in eastern South Sudan near the town of Fashoda (present-day Kodok), explaining its strategic importance.