French President Emmanuel Macron has just returned from a thunderous tour of Africa, during which he was keen to outline what he believes should be a new African policy for France. He displayed fashionable gestures, based on a break with the colonial past and repentance, but the visual effect was a sad spectacle of diplomatic amateurism and contempt for the people, from which France did not emerge unscathed.
The tone was set in a programmatic speech delivered on Monday, February 27th, when he had not yet left French soil. Three axes were given, to represent what should now be France’s roadmap in Africa: transformation of the French bases, still present on African soil, into different structures on the basis of “partnerships” to be defined; reduction, in parallel, of the number of military personnel, and restitution on request of the works of African art kept in French museums.
Emmanuel Macron’s inspiration is very much in tune with the times: to put an end to a period of neo-colonialism that has lasted too long—50 years, during which the French were at home in Africa, thinking it was up to the French to dictate African destiny instead of the Africans. But in his speech on February 27th, Emmanuel Macron actually played his role as colonist, in his proposition to pay a few billion euros to help African youth. Is this not, once again, neo-colonialism, and acting in the place of African leaders? All Emmanuel Macron did was abandon the vectors of traditional French influence—the army—and replace it with a discourse acceptable to the canons of political correctness—cultural investment in youth.
Listening to his pompous and infantilizing speech, which claims to respect Africa, one can only be dismayed. France will definitely lose all the links that unite it with Africa, for the worse —perhaps also for the better—and now Emmanuel Macron will have a decisive responsibility in this great renunciation.
The French president has shown himself to be devoid of any political creativity, of any capacity to consider the long term. He is, rather, concerned above all with sending good signals: yes, we will withdraw our troops; yes, we are going to return the works of art in our museums to the Africans. But there is no ambitious and realistic reflection on the new balances of power that are being established in Africa today, a shift in which France could have a relevant role to play: a role of experience and balance, in contrast to the brutality of Russian paramilitary groups or the greed of Chinese companies. France does have something alternative and positive to offer—a deep history that’s given it a detailed and intimate knowledge of Africa, valuable to helping it build a reasonable future?
Yet, there is no shortage of courses of action: reorganising development aid; fighting illegal immigration; encouraging the teaching of French as a means of combating illiteracy; committing to better ethical control of the extraction of natural resources—but none of these can be done without the involvement of the powers that benefit from these resources.
Macron does not care about this. He simply welcomes France’s withdrawal: “France no longer has a monopoly [pré carré] in Africa,” without examining the repercussions. From here on, China and Russia have a pré carré in Africa and intend to defend their interests tooth and nail. Anti-French movements are multiplying in Mali and Burkina Faso, sponsored by the Russians. The paramilitary group, Wagner, is taking root and does not care about the restitution of works of art promised by the French government, which has no other purpose than to pander to its politically correct conscience. Chinese companies are shamelessly plundering the resources, with absolute contempt for the local populations, but France’s honour is safe: France is withdrawing its bases.
As a consequence, even Great Britain is better off. Culturally advancing into Africa, the English have convinced former French colonies, such as Gabon, to join the Commonwealth, marking a decline in the cultural attractiveness of France and the French language.
Once the programme was announced from Paris, Emmanuel Macron embarked on a tour of Central Africa. The French head of state visited four countries: Angola, Gabon, Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of these, only two are former French colonies—Gabon and Congo. The editorial director of the newspaper Jeune Afrique, François Soudan, said on Saturday, March 4th on Francetvinfo that the French president was not met with “the popular enthusiasm that there could be at the time.” Emmanuel Macron is not Jacques Chirac, who was able to raise waves of jubilation during his travels in Africa, because he knew how to handle such a tour with skill, bonhomie, and charisma, exuding an unfeigned affection for the countries he crossed.
‘Humility’ was to be the watchword of Emmanuel Macron’s visits, but that term does not quite capture the spirit of his tour. The height of arrogance was reached during the visit to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire or the Belgian Congo. In front of the Congolese president, he uttered one of the most contemptuous sentences that a head of state can hear: “You have never been able to restore the sovereignty of your country. You should not look outside for blame,” he said without batting an eyelid at Félix Tshisekedi.
The position embodied by Emmanuel Macron in the DRC was most shameful, since it showed the French president to be both obtuse and insulting. As a reminder, the armed conflict in the DRC has its origins in the Rwandan civil war, which led to the genocide of the Tutsi population in 1994. The authorities of former Zaire (now DRC) were accused at the time of supporting the Hutu genocidaires by facilitating their incursions into Rwanda from bases in the east of the country. In May 1997, Rwanda and Uganda joined forces with the opponents of Zaire’s President Mobutu to overthrow him, in order to combat these crimes. Since then, instability has reigned in the DRC, and Rwanda does everything to maintain the civil war, which allows it to consolidate its local power. The UN itself has denounced Rwandan responsibility for the current unrest in the DRC.
But in this complex situation, Emmanuel Macron cowardly refused to point the finger at Rwanda, whose authoritarian regime, embodied by Paul Kagame, spends its time humiliating France and whose exact responsibilities at the time of the genocide remain unclear.
The DRC is also one of the richest countries in terms of rare minerals that are essential today to supply Western technology (lithium, coltan, cobalt), and is the object of fierce competition from international actors hoping to seize its natural wealth. Emmanuel Macron cannot ignore this, and there is something particularly dishonest about him believing that there is no culprit from “outside” in the critical situation in the DRC today.
Statements such as those made by Macron to Tshisekedi, therefore, reveal to the highest degree the ignorance and diplomatic irresponsibility of the French president. His mind is clouded with arrogance. He considers himself adulated, and has to take one slap on the wrist after another, as in the case of this rough exchange with the Moroccan authorities, which took place at the time of his speech on February 27th. The French president was responding to a Moroccan journalist who mentioned the “tense” relations between the two countries. “My will is to move forward with Morocco. His Majesty the king knows it, we have several discussions, personal relations are friendly, they will remain so,” he assured. The Moroccan response was unambiguous a few days later: “Relations are neither friendly nor good, neither between the two governments nor between the Royal Palace and the Élysée Palace,” the Moroccan government informed the newspaper Jeune Afrique.
The amateurism and casualness of Emmanuel Macron will be remembered at the end of this tour in Africa. It must be said that he is accustomed to such spectacles. Under his great air of bestowing wisdom—blessed by the UN—he is capable of the worst blunders. In 2017, during a visit to Burkina Faso, improvising on the frequent power cuts that the country suffers, did he not make fun of the Burkinabe president “who had gone to fix the air conditioning?” In the last few days, unattractive photos have circulated on the web, with a sullen eye and a haggard look, like this one in a Congolese nightclub. In 2022, criticising Malian policy as ineffective in its fight against terrorism, he was vigorously reframed by the spokesman of the military junta, who asked him to abandon “his neo-colonial, paternalistic, and condescending posture.”
Despite his declarations of good intentions, Macron has not changed, and is, perhaps, doing more harm to relations between France and Africa than the fifty years of ‘Françafrique’ that he denounces.
France’s Shame: Macron’s African Policy
Photo: LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP
French President Emmanuel Macron has just returned from a thunderous tour of Africa, during which he was keen to outline what he believes should be a new African policy for France. He displayed fashionable gestures, based on a break with the colonial past and repentance, but the visual effect was a sad spectacle of diplomatic amateurism and contempt for the people, from which France did not emerge unscathed.
The tone was set in a programmatic speech delivered on Monday, February 27th, when he had not yet left French soil. Three axes were given, to represent what should now be France’s roadmap in Africa: transformation of the French bases, still present on African soil, into different structures on the basis of “partnerships” to be defined; reduction, in parallel, of the number of military personnel, and restitution on request of the works of African art kept in French museums.
Emmanuel Macron’s inspiration is very much in tune with the times: to put an end to a period of neo-colonialism that has lasted too long—50 years, during which the French were at home in Africa, thinking it was up to the French to dictate African destiny instead of the Africans. But in his speech on February 27th, Emmanuel Macron actually played his role as colonist, in his proposition to pay a few billion euros to help African youth. Is this not, once again, neo-colonialism, and acting in the place of African leaders? All Emmanuel Macron did was abandon the vectors of traditional French influence—the army—and replace it with a discourse acceptable to the canons of political correctness—cultural investment in youth.
Listening to his pompous and infantilizing speech, which claims to respect Africa, one can only be dismayed. France will definitely lose all the links that unite it with Africa, for the worse —perhaps also for the better—and now Emmanuel Macron will have a decisive responsibility in this great renunciation.
The French president has shown himself to be devoid of any political creativity, of any capacity to consider the long term. He is, rather, concerned above all with sending good signals: yes, we will withdraw our troops; yes, we are going to return the works of art in our museums to the Africans. But there is no ambitious and realistic reflection on the new balances of power that are being established in Africa today, a shift in which France could have a relevant role to play: a role of experience and balance, in contrast to the brutality of Russian paramilitary groups or the greed of Chinese companies. France does have something alternative and positive to offer—a deep history that’s given it a detailed and intimate knowledge of Africa, valuable to helping it build a reasonable future?
Yet, there is no shortage of courses of action: reorganising development aid; fighting illegal immigration; encouraging the teaching of French as a means of combating illiteracy; committing to better ethical control of the extraction of natural resources—but none of these can be done without the involvement of the powers that benefit from these resources.
Macron does not care about this. He simply welcomes France’s withdrawal: “France no longer has a monopoly [pré carré] in Africa,” without examining the repercussions. From here on, China and Russia have a pré carré in Africa and intend to defend their interests tooth and nail. Anti-French movements are multiplying in Mali and Burkina Faso, sponsored by the Russians. The paramilitary group, Wagner, is taking root and does not care about the restitution of works of art promised by the French government, which has no other purpose than to pander to its politically correct conscience. Chinese companies are shamelessly plundering the resources, with absolute contempt for the local populations, but France’s honour is safe: France is withdrawing its bases.
As a consequence, even Great Britain is better off. Culturally advancing into Africa, the English have convinced former French colonies, such as Gabon, to join the Commonwealth, marking a decline in the cultural attractiveness of France and the French language.
Once the programme was announced from Paris, Emmanuel Macron embarked on a tour of Central Africa. The French head of state visited four countries: Angola, Gabon, Congo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Of these, only two are former French colonies—Gabon and Congo. The editorial director of the newspaper Jeune Afrique, François Soudan, said on Saturday, March 4th on Francetvinfo that the French president was not met with “the popular enthusiasm that there could be at the time.” Emmanuel Macron is not Jacques Chirac, who was able to raise waves of jubilation during his travels in Africa, because he knew how to handle such a tour with skill, bonhomie, and charisma, exuding an unfeigned affection for the countries he crossed.
‘Humility’ was to be the watchword of Emmanuel Macron’s visits, but that term does not quite capture the spirit of his tour. The height of arrogance was reached during the visit to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), formerly known as Zaire or the Belgian Congo. In front of the Congolese president, he uttered one of the most contemptuous sentences that a head of state can hear: “You have never been able to restore the sovereignty of your country. You should not look outside for blame,” he said without batting an eyelid at Félix Tshisekedi.
The position embodied by Emmanuel Macron in the DRC was most shameful, since it showed the French president to be both obtuse and insulting. As a reminder, the armed conflict in the DRC has its origins in the Rwandan civil war, which led to the genocide of the Tutsi population in 1994. The authorities of former Zaire (now DRC) were accused at the time of supporting the Hutu genocidaires by facilitating their incursions into Rwanda from bases in the east of the country. In May 1997, Rwanda and Uganda joined forces with the opponents of Zaire’s President Mobutu to overthrow him, in order to combat these crimes. Since then, instability has reigned in the DRC, and Rwanda does everything to maintain the civil war, which allows it to consolidate its local power. The UN itself has denounced Rwandan responsibility for the current unrest in the DRC.
But in this complex situation, Emmanuel Macron cowardly refused to point the finger at Rwanda, whose authoritarian regime, embodied by Paul Kagame, spends its time humiliating France and whose exact responsibilities at the time of the genocide remain unclear.
The DRC is also one of the richest countries in terms of rare minerals that are essential today to supply Western technology (lithium, coltan, cobalt), and is the object of fierce competition from international actors hoping to seize its natural wealth. Emmanuel Macron cannot ignore this, and there is something particularly dishonest about him believing that there is no culprit from “outside” in the critical situation in the DRC today.
Statements such as those made by Macron to Tshisekedi, therefore, reveal to the highest degree the ignorance and diplomatic irresponsibility of the French president. His mind is clouded with arrogance. He considers himself adulated, and has to take one slap on the wrist after another, as in the case of this rough exchange with the Moroccan authorities, which took place at the time of his speech on February 27th. The French president was responding to a Moroccan journalist who mentioned the “tense” relations between the two countries. “My will is to move forward with Morocco. His Majesty the king knows it, we have several discussions, personal relations are friendly, they will remain so,” he assured. The Moroccan response was unambiguous a few days later: “Relations are neither friendly nor good, neither between the two governments nor between the Royal Palace and the Élysée Palace,” the Moroccan government informed the newspaper Jeune Afrique.
The amateurism and casualness of Emmanuel Macron will be remembered at the end of this tour in Africa. It must be said that he is accustomed to such spectacles. Under his great air of bestowing wisdom—blessed by the UN—he is capable of the worst blunders. In 2017, during a visit to Burkina Faso, improvising on the frequent power cuts that the country suffers, did he not make fun of the Burkinabe president “who had gone to fix the air conditioning?” In the last few days, unattractive photos have circulated on the web, with a sullen eye and a haggard look, like this one in a Congolese nightclub. In 2022, criticising Malian policy as ineffective in its fight against terrorism, he was vigorously reframed by the spokesman of the military junta, who asked him to abandon “his neo-colonial, paternalistic, and condescending posture.”
Despite his declarations of good intentions, Macron has not changed, and is, perhaps, doing more harm to relations between France and Africa than the fifty years of ‘Françafrique’ that he denounces.
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