Why Macron is struggling to rebuild France鈥檚 ties with Africa
| Johannesburg
The summit that French President Emmanuel Macron convened in Kenya this week was supposed to be the hard launch of a new version of France in Africa.
This France 2.0 wasn鈥檛 just interested in its backyard 鈥� or le pr茅-carr茅 鈥� of former French colonies. It wanted alliances continent-wide. This new France didn鈥檛 wring its hands about the past. Instead, it was forward-looking, 鈥渆ntirely free of hang-ups,鈥� as Mr. Macron declared at the Africa Forward Summit鈥檚 opening ceremony on Monday.
The gathering was the first that France had ever convened in an anglophone African country, which 鈥渟peaks volumes to the new approach France is taking towards Africa,鈥� says Nicasius Achu Check, an expert in France-Africa relations at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. As the summit finished on Tuesday, Mr. Macron announced that French and African companies had pledged to invest $27 billion on the continent in sectors ranging from energy to artificial intelligence. And on Wednesday, the French president traveled to Ethiopia for diplomatic meetings there.
Why We Wrote This
France is trying to bolster its fading influence in Africa, with promises of big investment and equal partnership. But its colonial history continues to create road bumps.
But the Kenya summit also held reminders that the new France in Africa comes mingled with the old, such as when Mr. Macron barged on stage during a panel discussion, interrupting the presenter to shush chattering audience members. 鈥淗ey!鈥� the president shouted as he seized the mic from the emcee. 鈥淚鈥檓 sorry, guys, but ... this is a total lack of respect.鈥�
Mr. Macron is known in France for often chiding the public, but as a video of this incident went viral, young, online Africans appeared to collectively wince. Was Mr. Macron really scolding his African counterparts like a school teacher, at an event meant to showcase their status as equal partners?
For many observers, the incident called to mind exactly the uncomfortable history that Mr. Macron had hoped to sidestep, and underscored a larger truth about France鈥檚 role in Africa: Mr. Macron had spent nearly a decade in office promising a 鈥渞efounded relationship鈥� with the continent. But in reality, Professor Check says, 鈥渨e haven鈥檛 seen much change.鈥�
A fraught relationship
When Mr. Macron was elected in 2017, France鈥檚 youngest-ever president quickly laid out a vision for a new kind of French comportement, or behavior, in Africa.
鈥淚 am from a generation that does not come and tell Africa what to do,鈥� the then-39-year-old of university students in Burkina Faso a few months after he took office. France鈥檚 fraught and painful history in Africa, he declared, was no longer a place worth dwelling. 鈥淥ur duty is not to stay in this past but to wholeheartedly live this generation鈥檚 adventure,鈥� he declared.
But for many in France鈥檚 former African colonies, the image of a shared French-African 鈥渁dventure鈥� approached the farcical. For decades, their countries had been economically and politically tethered to France in ways that many felt left them fundamentally worse off.
Simmering resentment over this unequal relationship, dubbed 蹿谤补苍莽补蹿谤颈辩耻别, broke into the open when a wave of coups swept across the Sahel in the early 2020s. The young military leaders who came to power in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger made no secret of their disdain for France. They, along with Chad, soon booted out the French troops stationed inside their borders. The Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, and Senegal also requested the withdrawal of the French military.
At times, Mr. Macron could not hide his bitterness. 鈥淚 think that they forgot to say 鈥榯hank you鈥欌�� for France鈥檚 military assistance, to a group of French ambassadors last year.
Chad鈥檚 president, Mahamat Idriss聽D茅by Itno, shot back, saying that Mr. Macron was 鈥渓iving in the wrong era,鈥� and that his comments 鈥渂order on contempt for Africa and Africans.鈥�
All this meant that, by the time Mr. Macron arrived in Kenya this week, he was in damage-control mode, says Adekeye Adebajo, an international relations specialist and senior research fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
Macron鈥檚 legacy
Mr. Macron framed his overtures to the rest of Africa as a 鈥渓eap together鈥� into the future, and at the summit鈥檚 opening on Monday, Kenyan President William Ruto saluted Mr. Macron for 鈥渉aving the courage to recalibrate the relationship between Africa and France.鈥�
But Professor Adebajo sees a more pragmatic aim. With less than a year before the end of his second and final term, Mr. Macron is trying to salvage his administration鈥檚 standing in Africa 鈥� as well as his own legacy as a progressive leader. 鈥淗e鈥檚 acting out of necessity but trying to sell it as something that is a strategy,鈥� says Mr. Adebajo.
Yet, even as Mr. Macron attempts to secure his legacy, the French president is facing another uncomfortable truth: France matters less than it ever has in Africa.
Across the continent, Paris is being elbowed out of the way economically and politically by ascendant powers such as China and Russia, even as it tries to cast itself as a more responsible partner.
鈥淭he paradox is that we are not the predators of this century,鈥� Mr. Macron told The Africa Report in an interview just before the summit. 鈥淓uropeans may once have been. But they are not now.鈥�
