French President, Emmanuel Macron and his Kenyan counterpart, William Ruto, recently cohosted the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, with the intention of rebuilding relations between France and African countries. Michael Olugbode, in this report, tries to place what the meeting means to France and Africa, now and in the future.
For more than six decades after formal decolonisation, relations between France and Africa have remained among the most complex, controversial and strategically important international relationships in the world. What began as a colonial enterprise evolved into political alliances, military partnerships, economic dependence, cultural exchanges and, increasingly in recent years, bitter disputes over sovereignty and influence.
Today, however, that relationship appears to be entering another turning point.
At the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, co-hosted by Emmanuel Macron and William Ruto, African and European leaders attempted to redefine the future of Africa-France relations around the language of equality, co-investment, sovereignty and shared prosperity.
The summit was historically symbolic. For the first time, the traditional Africa-France summit was held in a major Anglophone African country rather than a Francophone former French colony. That alone reflected a deliberate shift in France’s African policy.
