score:8
I have found it now here: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/24_Lombart.pdf (footnote 40), where someone (not Chirac himself) says that Chirac is “de ceux pour qui ‘sans l’Afrique, la France deviendrait une puissance de troisième rang’” (one of those for whom “without Africa France would become a third-rate power”). NB. "third rate" not "third world".