On Monday, more than thirty African leaders began a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron in Kenya as Paris looked for fresh agreements and collaborations amid indications that its power was waning in some of its former colonies on the continent.
Following several defeats in West Africa, where several Francophone authorities have reduced security and business ties with their former colonial ruler, France is holding its first Africa Forward Summit in an English-speaking country.
Macron stated that France and Africa were equal partners with shared goals while sitting with Kenyan President William Ruto in a panel discussion about technology and artificial intelligence with young entrepreneurs.
Many of the answers are produced in China or the United States,” he stated. “I believe that developing our strategic autonomy for Europe and Africa is a shared struggle. We will be much stronger if we work together to construct it.”
More than thirty African presidents, deputy presidents, and prime ministers are there, together with executives from top French companies, including TotalEnergies, and Orange (Africa’s richest man, Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote).
During Macron and Ruto’s official visit on Sunday, agreements totaling more than $1 billion were revealed. A
Among these were plans by the French shipping company CMA CGM to invest 700 million euros ($823 million) to modernize a terminal in the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
It is also anticipated that investments in clean energy, artificial intelligence, and other fields will be disclosed.
Although it has also faced setbacks, France, which has hosted similar events in French-speaking countries since the 1970s, has boasted of growing trade with African nations.
A $1.5 billion highway expansion deal with a consortium headed by France’s Vinci SA was terminated by Ruto’s government this year, giving it to Chinese companies after Kenyan authorities claimed it put them at too much danger.
Kenya wants the G7 to discuss the summit outcomes.
Kenya intends to use the conference to progress discussions on making the global financial system more equitable to severely indebted African nations and to draw in French investors hoping to benefit from the pan-African free trade area (AfCFTA).
At the invitation of France, which serves as the group’s alternating president, the president of Kenya will attend the G7 meeting in Evian-les-Bains next month.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi told reporters, “We think it’s a good thing if critical outcomes of this meeting… can also be mainstreamed as critical agenda items by the G7.”
Although France has historically had the strongest ties to Africa in its former colonies in the west and center of the continent, anti-French sentiment is growing.
Since 2020, coups have taken place in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, bringing in Russian mercenaries and expelling French forces.
After Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye declared that French bases were incompatible with the nation’s sovereignty, France likewise relinquished control of its final significant military site in Senegal last July.
On Sunday, Macron played down the absence of several leaders from the summit, pointing out that civil society representatives and a number of West African heads of state, including Faye, will be attending.
