At the start of a four-day tour of Africa, Emmanuel Macron wanted to lay the foundations for a new relationship between France and the continent, as he took part in a summit on the protection of tropical forests in Gabon on Thursday. .
“This age of Françafrique is well over and I sometimes have the feeling that mentalities are not evolving at the same pace as us when I read, I hear, I see that France is still attributed intentions that she doesn’t have, she doesn’t have anymore”, indicated the Head of State to the French community in Gabon, stressing also that the French military reorganization he announced Monday in a speech in Paris is not “neither a withdrawal nor a disengagement”.
Macron is blamed for his meetings with authoritarian leaders
In recent years, France has tried to break with “Françafrique”, its opaque practices and its networks of influence inherited from colonialism. But on the continent, Emmanuel Macron is still criticized for continuing his meetings with African leaders deemed authoritarian.
In Libreville, the French president first went in the morning to the Arboretum Raponda Walker park, one of the protected areas on the Gabonese coast north of Libreville, before speaking to the French community in the country. at the residence of the French ambassador.
The arrival of Emmanuel Macron has been decried by part of the political opposition and Gabonese civil society, who accuse him of coming to “doubt” Ali Bongo while the Gabonese will elect a new president this year. Ali Bongo had succeeded his father, Omar Bongo Ondimba, after the death of this pillar of Françafrique who had led the country for 41 years. Ali Bongo was re-elected under controversial conditions in 2016 and will probably stand for re-election this year.
A reduction in the French military presence
This is Emmanuel Macron’s eighteenth trip to Africa since the start of his first five-year term in 2017, where French influence and presence are increasingly questioned. Since 2022, the French army has been pushed out of Mali and Burkina Faso by the ruling juntas in these two countries. On Tuesday, the day after Mr Macron’s speech on Africa, Burkina also denounced a military assistance agreement signed with France in 1961, the year after the country’s independence from a former French colony.
Bolstered by mercenaries from the Wagner group and disinformation campaigns that fuel anti-French sentiment, Russia is increasingly outweighing Paris in this historic French sphere of influence.
Emmanuel Macron presented Monday from Paris his African strategy for the next four years. He advocated “humility” and encouraged a new “balanced” and “responsible” partnership with African countries. He also announced a reduction in the French military presence, which has been concentrated for ten years on the fight against jihadism in the Sahel.
