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The incident happened on Sunday, just hours after an Ethiopian Airline flight crashed and killed all passengers on board.
The Air France A380 plane was forced to land after an engine failure was detected while the plane had taken off and in mid-flight.
Air France-KLM manager for West Africa Jean-Luc Mevellec, who confirmed the incident to AFP, said: “It is what is called an engine blow-out.”
“It happens from time to time. It is a well-known phenomenon, well understood and crew are well trained on simulators all year long to deal with this time of fault,” he added.
A journalist with Bloomberg News, Baudelaire Mieu, also explained that there were flames, before a large bang on was heard on the left side of the aircraft.
“We were flying over Niger (to Paris)… I saw a ball of flame for a few seconds and then a large bang on the left side of the aircraft.
“The plane began to roll, everything was shaking and people started to panic. The pilot came on and said ‘We have just lost a left side engine. We are returning to Abidjan,” he told AFP.
Earlier on Sunday, an Ethiopian Airlines plane has crashed en route to Nairobi, killing all 157 on board.
The company issued an official statement on the matter confirming that the flight has crashed with 149 passengers and eight crew members on board.
The plane, according to the company, took off at 8:38 a.m. local time (05:38 GMT) from the Bole Addis Ababa and lost contact at around 08:44 a.m.
Although no Ghanaian was among the casualties, it has been confirmed that over 3 other nationalities were among those on board the new Boeing 737-8 MAX plane that crashed.