Congratulated by his African peers for his clear victory, the French president now intends to continue the path traced in Ouagadougou in November 2017 and in Montpellier last October. After the constitution of his new team, the question will arise of his first trip to the continent. The hypothesis of a trip to the DRC and Angola seems to hold the rope.
It is 8:39 p.m. this Sunday, April 24. Emmanuel Macron has just been re-elected when he receives one of the very first congratulatory messages from the African continent. It comes from Ali Bongo Ondimba. On Twitter, the Gabonese president salute “ his brilliant re-election “. A qualifier taken up a little later by Mohamed Bazoum, Félix Tshisekedi, Moussa Faki Mahamat and Mahamat Déby Itno. Without imagining defeat, some of these leaders feared a narrow victory. It is finally quite wide. “ That he wins with a gap of 17 points, that’s a surprise, a good surprise » confides off the microphone the adviser to a president, “ with all the analyses, everything we heard, we said to ourselves that it might be 52/48, 53/47 “.
Until Monday evening, messages from African officials are linked on the social network. From Macky Sall to Alassane Ouattara, via Paul Kagame and Patrice Talon. Everyone says in their own way their satisfaction at continuing their collaboration with Emmanuel Macron.
Some even pick up their phones to congratulate the 26th elected president in person. This is particularly the case of Felix Tshisekedi. A phone call like a leap into the past. Sending her best wishes for “full success” for this second term – and calling for the “ strengthening of relations between the DRC and France and more broadly between Africa and Europe –, the Congolese president has certainly not forgotten that five years earlier, then a simple opponent, he had made the trip to Paris to congratulate Emmanuel Macron on the evening of his election.
The roadmap remains the same
Some Macronist officials have been preparing for this second five-year term for months. In the spring of 2021, a small group of around twenty people formed around Aurélien Le Chevallier, former deputy Sherpa to Emmanuel Macron and current French ambassador to Pretoria. Its mission is to prepare for the future by drawing up an initial assessment of the five-year term on international issues.
Discreetly, the team probes experts, diplomats, to take stock of what worked and what worked less well. On Africa, between committed memorial work, the return of works of art to the mainlandthe reform of the CFA franc, those close to the president believe that the policy of “ rupture getting started is the correct one. No change in strategy is therefore to be expected. The objective will remain the same: to try to dust off a relationship damaged by time.
“ We still have a very solid roadmap resulting from the major milestones of the first five-year term, explains an adviser to the president. The Ouagadougou speech, the Montpellier summit, the Europe-Africa summit, the summit on the financing of African economies “.
with the possibility of opening up funding to other governments or African philanthropists », Indicates a good connoisseur of the file. A project in which the Cameroonian political scientist and historian should invest fully.
Multifaceted aid to the countries of the Gulf of Guinea
Another proposal retained: the construction in Paris of a house of African worlds. Achille Mbembe’s initial idea was ” to do something that symbolizes the contribution of African cultural, intellectual, artistic creation in the history of the French universal “. The prefiguration mission, led by diplomat Luc Brillard and journalist Liz Gomis, submitted its report last March to the president. More ambitious than at the start, this project should open up to the diasporas. ” It will also be a place of education, open to the general public, so the house will not only have cultural functions “, confides a source very familiar with this file.
On the military level, the transformation of the system initiated last year in the Sahel will continue. The logic ? Fewer French soldiers on the ground and on the front line, but more soldiers in support of the local armies. With Niger as the new number one ally in the region. The departure of French soldiers from Mali will be effective in the coming months. After the recent closure of Gossi, the bases of Ménaka and Gao will in turn close. By the end of summer? “ It’s a bit optimistic “, do we estimate at the Elysée where we count more on a ” September October “.
At the same time, Paris will provide multifaceted aid to the countries of the Gulf of Guinea in an attempt to stem the jihadist threat. This support will be on a case-by-case basis. The nature of the assistance provided? Intelligence and air support generally. As well as ” from targeted training in headquarters to build the capacity of security apparatuses “, Specifies the same source within the presidential palace.
A first trip to the DRC and/or Angola?
If the political line therefore remains unchanged, the cast could evolve within the presidential palace as well as at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the arrival of new faces. The device should also be partly reviewed. An idea seems to be gaining ground: that of creating at the Quai d’Orsay a delegated ministry or a State secretariat dedicated to major themes, with a strong African dimension, such as climate, health, education or gender equality. /women.
The hypothesis cannot be excluded. But another track is obviously under study. “ We envisages this second five-year term as a continuation of the previous one, indicates a close friend of the head of state. There are areas, African geographies that the President has not yet visited, so the idea too is not necessarily to give a very symbolic signal at the start of his mandate, but rather to continue to roll out the roadmap that we had set ourselves ».
A trip to the DRC and Angola – a trip prevented during the first five-year term by the Covid-19 crisis – is therefore on the table. ” The idea is also to go where he has not yet goneinsists this same adviser. And then, there are interlocutors he met who marked him, he adds. Tanzanian President [Samia Suluhu Hassan]the new president of Zambia [Hakainde Hichilema]who are interesting interlocutors that we will try to cultivate “.
The scenario of a first distant trip, in several stages, seems to take shape. Always with this desire to open up to non-French-speaking countries. On the Congolese side, we seem in any case determined to welcome Emmanuel Macron quickly. “ We will do everything so that (Her arrival) materialize before the end of the year “, we confide in the entourage of President Tshisekedi. And for good reason: next year, the DR Congo will be in the middle of an electoral campaign.