Before flying away for a four-day trip to Africa, Emmanuel Macron had the sole objective of getting rid of a cumbersome cliché: “La Françafrique”. The press conference organized a few days before the presidential trip was supposed to allow him to travel lighter and to present the “coherence” of his action. It also aimed to recall the importance of “modesty” and “listening”, in the creation of yet another “new relationship between France and the African continent”. Unfortunately, this African tour was more akin to a road trip incomprehensible only to serious and respectful State visits to the hosts of France.
Indeed, in four days the president visited the capitals of Gabon, Angola, Congo and finally the DRC. He also managed to cover the last three in twenty-four hours flat, ignoring the importance attached to long time in African culture. In addition, we desperately seek the coherence of this whirlwind trip. The succession of trips did not seem to be motivated by any common thread. The interlocutors were varied and have as common point only their geographical proximity. Telling President Ali Bongo, in the midst of the presidential campaign, that we do not support any candidate, telling Angolan and Portuguese-speaking President Joao Lourenço that we are happy to meet him and implying to President Sassou-Nguesso that he is not frequentable take the place of African politics? All in all, this trip, so far removed from the realities and requirements of the present and the future, says a lot about the inconsistencies that we have had with the African continent for six years now. Examples abound.
A symbol, the holding in Paris in 2024 of the next Summit of the Francophonie even though between 2017 and 2020, the executive did not consider it useful to appoint a Secretary of State in charge of this portfolio. In bilateral relations, inconstancy is also often the order of the day. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron’s first official visit to the Maghreb marked France’s desire for rapprochement with Morocco. It ultimately ended with a sad observation issued a few days ago by Rabat: relations between our two countries are “neither good nor friendly”. The relationship with Algeria has also been fluctuating to say the least. In 2017 the candidate Macron offered to present an “apology” for colonization. But since then, he has continued to suffer setbacks and disappointments in his dialogue with an Algerian power that plays with his inconstancy and probably his profound ignorance of the context and the subject.
Discussions focused on the past and not on a shared future
This lack of strategic vision has serious consequences. Without a compass, the African tour of the Head of State was in reality summed up in proclaiming loud and clear the end of Françafrique and in striving to demonstrate it: military disengagement, always eloquent promises on on the cultural level (announcement of a framework law for the restitution of objects for the benefit of African countries that request it) and finally a quiet decline on the economic level. Because even on this last subject, which should have been the central theme, the President preferred to lecture our nationals, established in these countries as part of their businesses, rather than providing them with unwavering support with means adapted to the new situation of this continent. With market shares divided by 2.5 in twenty years, we expected a voluntarist and committed message, as had been able to do, in other times, a President Chirac, a fine connoisseur of each of the countries of this complex continent and who never I would have tolerated France being able to accumulate so many blunders and errors in matters of African policy.
As always with Emmanuel Macron, the discussions focused on the past and not on a shared future, always leading to the same result: fueling anti-French resentment in Africa. As if the future now seemed to be a subject of discussion reserved for other countries such as Russia, China or Turkey, which are determined not to wander from capital to capital but, on the contrary – and this is not is not glorious – to settle permanently on the African continent without any particular moral or memorial requirements.