From Kenya, “The Fracis” Return to Africa

French President Emmanuel Macron arrives this time at the Franco-African summit as though rediscovering what former Senegalese President Macky Sall once told former German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to Senegal.

During his years in office, Sall often toured his country and realized day after day that the Senegalese citizen in particular—and the African citizen more broadly—continued to dream of migration, either from rural regions toward the capital or toward Europe across the Mediterranean. In both cases, the search was fundamentally for one thing: opportunity and employment.

When Merkel visited Senegal, Sall spoke candidly to her. As a leader concerned with the future of his African nation, he said he asked nothing from Europe except genuine cooperation in creating jobs on African soil. He went even further, telling her that her position in the German Chancellery represented a major opportunity to rethink relations between the two continents and to formulate modern frameworks governing mobility, travel, and human movement.

Sall later recounted these details in his book Senegal in the Heart, published by the Arab Cultural Center in Casablanca. Throughout the book, he never concealed his deep concern for the African continent as a whole—its problems, its vast potential, and the proper way to harness its resources and shape its future horizons.

Something of this same spirit can be found in Macron’s visit to Kenya to attend the summit being held for the first time in an English-speaking African country. Traditionally, Franco-African summits were hosted in French-speaking African states. Yet the winds have not blown in France’s favor in recent years.

There came a moment when France found itself effectively expelled from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and other African countries. One after another, new authorities in these states openly declared their frustration with the French presence and gave Paris deadlines to withdraw peacefully and gracefully.

For his part, Macron did not hesitate during the summit to publicly acknowledge before the world’s media that the era of extensive French influence across Africa had come to an end.

France, he explained, now seeks a fundamentally different kind of presence in Africa. If a new form of influence emerges, it will not be based on aid as it once was, but on cooperation, investment, and an economy jointly shaped by African and French hands.

What Macron did not explicitly mention about the previous era of French dominance in parts of Africa is that it rested upon an old colonial vision of power and presence. And it was precisely this colonial mindset that caused the three aforementioned states to reject the French role so decisively.

No African state truly rejects productive relations with France across political, economic, and cultural levels. The problem has always been the nature of the relationship Paris sought to impose—or the lens through which it viewed its engagement with African nations.

Paris appears now to be attempting a return to these states and others under a new framework for relations. Yet when France tried to come back, it discovered that other capitals had already occupied much of the space it once dominated. Russia, for example, has been among the foremost powers moving aggressively to establish a foothold and consolidate its influence across the continent.

And if France now returns through an English-speaking African country, the move resembles more a quiet reentry than an open restoration—even if it unfolds publicly before the world.

It is a French attempt that refuses despair in its relationship with Africa. Or perhaps it resembles someone forced to leave through the front door, only to attempt reentry through the window after discovering the door firmly shut—despite once believing himself master of the house.

France is undeniably a nation of culture, civilization, and history. It never ceases to invoke this identity when dealing with powers such as the United States. Yet it is equally called upon to invoke this face when engaging with Africa.

For Africa itself possesses deep reservoirs of history, culture, and civilization. These realities demand that France present its civilizational face rather than its colonial one; that it exchange culture for culture, history for history, civilization for civilization; and that it transform the Mediterranean into a bridge of communication in both directions rather than a one-way tunnel for extracting the continent’s wealth, as occurred in previous eras.

It is possible that the summit in Nairobi marks the beginning of a different chapter precisely because it is the first of its kind in an English-speaking African country. Perhaps it may finally place relations between Africa and France on the path they should have followed from the very beginning.

When the Egyptian historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti referred to the French in his famous work Marvelous Compositions of Biographies and Events, he called them “the Franks.”

And perhaps, as they once again knock on Africa’s door through Kenya, the “Franks” are being invited to try a different face—one they have rarely shown Africa since first establishing a foothold on the continent.

Quoted from: Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper