Macron Interrupted A Panel At A Summit Co-Hosted With Kenya To Redefine France’s Relationship With Africa
Macron walked onto the stage uninvited and took the microphone from the moderator, saying he would “make order”.
French president Emmanuel Macron is facing backlash after he interrupted a panel of young African artists at a summit in Kenya aimed at redefining France’s relationship with African countries, many of which used to be former French colonies.
France colonized much of West and Central Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
When those countries gained independence in the 1960s, France maintained military bases across the continent, propped up friendly governments and kept deep economic ties, including a currency called the CFA franc, which is still used by about 14 African countries today.
The CFA franc’s exchange rate is fixed to the euro and whose acronym originally stood for "Colonies Françaises d'Afrique," or French Colonies in Africa.
This system became known as "Françafrique" — French Africa — a term critics used to describe what they saw as France not treating its former colonies as independent nations.
However, from 2022, several French-speaking countries have begun cutting ties with France.
Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad all terminated their defense agreements with France, while Ivory Coast, Senegal and the Central African Republic also requested a French military withdrawal.
The Africa Forward summit was the first time France held this kind of summit in an English-speaking African country.
On May 11 to 12, France and Kenya co-hosted the Africa Forward Summit, a two-day gathering in Nairobi that drew more than 30 African leaders and nearly 7,000 business leaders.
The summit was meant to mark a new chapter in France's relationship with Africa in what Macron has called a “partnership of equals”.
During a session featuring young African artists and entrepreneurs, parts of the audience were talking loudly over the speakers.
In a video that spread quickly online, Macron walked onto the stage uninvited and took the microphone from the moderator, saying he would “make order”.
“I'm sorry, guys. But it's impossible to speak about culture with such a noise,” he told the audience in English. “This is a total lack of respect.”
The clip quickly drew criticism online, with a former MP from Zimbabwe saying on X that it was “not courteous or appropriate” for Macron to “talk down at people” on the continent.
“As soon as he sets foot on the African continent, he can't help but behave like a colonist,” a lawmaker from the hard-left party France also said on X, criticizing the move.
Meanwhile, Kenya's president William Ruto used the joint summit to publicly declare that Africa is done accepting aid and charity from former colonial powers and wants to be treated as an equal instead.
Ruto used the word "sovereignty" eight times in his closing speech.
He said that the new partnership "must not be built on dependency but on sovereign equality, not on aid or charity but on mutually beneficial investment, and not on extraction or exploitation but on win-win engagements," Ruto said.
"This continent was a victim of brutal colonialism, all the way to slave trade exploitation. We will not allow that to happen again," he said.
At the summit, Macron announced 23 billion euros (about US$26.8 billion) in investment directed at energy, agriculture, and artificial intelligence across Africa, which he said would create 250,000 jobs in France and Africa.
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