In Nairobi, Emmanuel Macron began a global farewell tour by African heads of state. Until the end, he will have found the means to surprise and to abandon himself to the sovereign pleasure of displeasing. Disruptive, always! For the first time, the Franco-African summit was held in a country that speaks English with heads of state who often do not speak it.
The France-Africa summit, an annual meeting imagined under Georges Pompidou, became the Africa-France summit in 2010. A revealing semantic shift. The latest in Montpellier, with “representatives of civil society” without any head of state, with the exception of Emmanuel Macron. For five years, the meeting disappeared, before being reborn under this uncontrolled name: Africa Forward Summit. That is to say a summit without the word France and without a word of French. The real problem of the French-speaking world is in the heads of the Parisian elites. For sure!
Francophobia
There were great advantages to going to Kenya. First, the novelty. This is what media diplomacy loves. Then, Paris has no colonial liabilities and spares itself the usual verses on the rule of law, good governance, the rights of sexual minorities, etc. All this preaching inflicted on the leaders of the continent treated like provincial cousins to whom France must teach a lesson. Above all, this Kenyan change of scenery obscures the disenchantment that France experiences in its former homeland where Francophobia proves to be highly contagious. From Mali, it spread across the entire Sahel with the speed of a bush fire and then contaminated West Africa. In Central Africa as in the Maghreb, relations with the Élysée are acrimonious, when they are not detestable as with Algeria, Madagascar or the Congo.
In Nairobi, where the palaver tree was planted for two days, Emmanuel Macron explained that “the meadow is over”. He seemed to rejoice about it. He should have added: “For a long time. » The Berlin Wall fell thirty-seven years ago and, with the end of the Cold War, there was no longer any need for a French gendarme to protect the former colonial domain from communist contagion. With globalization, the Americans, the Japanese, the Germans, the Chinese, the Indians, the Turks have trampled our flowerbeds. The Russians even chased us out of the Sahel. Thirty-seven years later, Emmanuel Macron took note of this. After repeating for nine years, “France-Africa is over”.
A word that drives you crazy
France-Africa is a word with evil power. It drives you crazy. It is supposed to describe the set of more or less occult, financial, economic and military networks which would keep Africa dependent on Paris. To say France-Afrique is to summon to the bar of a tribunal of the holy progressive Inquisition, the crooked intermediaries and the barbouzes, the corruption of the elites and electoral financing, the stuffing of ballot boxes and the looting of the basement… France-Afrique rhymes with money. The CFAs who fill the briefcases and are missing to electrify the continent.
In Central Africa as in the Maghreb, relations with the Élysée are acrimonious
If it was predictable that in Africa opponents would use it to accuse tyrants of sleeping with the white man, we are surprised that self-hatred has wreaked havoc in France to the point that it is turning its back on the continent. The shame of France-Africa has discredited the entire heritage. The ports, roads, hospitals, schools left behind, more than a century crossed together and two wars fought together, right down to this shared language.
Emmanuel Macron took his first steps by accusing colonial France of crimes against humanity. He ended his reign in English, after being delighted that Arabic was the second language spoken in France. The circle is closed.
