France grapples with Francophone Africa’s growing push for sovereignty – Technologist

In November 2017, six months after Emmanuel Macron was elected French president, he spoke at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso, where he told the audience that he had not “come to tell you what France’s policy for Africa should be.” There in the land of Thomas Sankara, a revolutionary and symbol of resistance to neocolonialism in Africa, who became president from 1983 to 1987, France’s new president continued: “Because there no longer is a French policy for Africa!” Recognizing the need for a new kind of relationship between France and the continent, Macron promised a “profound change” and an end to “the false discourse we have sometimes been caught up in.”

His predecessors, François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy, had also promised to rebuild French-African relations. But this time, the hopes raised were even higher. The unconventional image of the Fifth Republic’s youngest president – who presented himself as a break from the traditional parties and the political elite tied to the “Françafrique” system – resonated with younger Africans aspiring to sovereignty who didn’t recognize themselves in their aging leaders. “Like you, I am from a generation that has never known a colonized Africa,” he said, to the applause of Burkinabe students.

By aligning himself with the people rather than their presidents – as at the New Africa-France Summit in Montpellier in October 2021, to which only representatives of African civil societies were invited – Macron “has breathed life into the idea of a new world, but without making it a reality,” said economist and former Togolese minister Kako Nubukpo. According to him, Macron’s African diplomacy “suffered from a contradiction between rhetoric and practice, making it incomprehensible for Africans.”

“He could not escape the French paradox born of the independence era,” he added, “which has always been to say: ‘We’re leaving, but without leaving; we’re changing, but without changing.'”

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