FRANCE-AFRICA: THE INCORRIGIBLE MACRON!

Clearly, French President Emmanuel Macron has an unfortunate tendency to make his case worse and therefore that of his country. Nicolas Normand, former French ambassador to Mali, Senegal and Congo, did not think he understood Macron so well when, on our colleagues at RFI, he declared that the French president “believed that intelligence could replace experience or knowledge”. A subtle way for a seasoned diplomat to denounce Macron’s increasingly annoying interventionism in the sphere of his country’s foreign policy. And if this interference is less and less accepted, it is because it is accompanied by clumsiness and deviations that are detrimental to the image and interests of France. This is evidenced by this unfortunate statement by President Macron in which he denounces the “ingratitude” of Africans. Just that! Coming from a leader who has suffered many setbacks on the African front in recent years, this is quite surprising. By Boubacar Sanso Barry

Macron has no sense of history

How is this possible, a speech filled with so much arrogance and disdain? How can President Emmanuel Macron treat African leaders as ungrateful, especially after the Dakar speech and even his own outing in Ouagadougou, at the beginning of his first term? How is it that he, whose country and soldiers are being sent back from all over Africa, can make such a speech? Either Emmanuel Macron is being stubborn, or it is a provocation. But in any case, it is clumsy. At a time when the world is in the midst of a complete recomposition, this is not the speech that should be made, especially not from France. But perhaps that is Macron’s problem. He has no sense of history. He does not sufficiently integrate everything that his country owes to Africa. Otherwise, the lucidity that he invoked more than once during his speech before the ambassadors, he would have used more when he had to talk about Africa. Thus, African leaders should have prostrated themselves before King Macron, to signify Africa’s recognition of the great France for having saved it from the terrorist peril! What a cliché! Above all, what a discrepancy with the image that we have today of France in Africa!

Macron, symbolism of the immobility of France-Africa relations

This claim, the result of a distressing lack of understanding of the dynamics underway in Africa, is unfortunately not only counterproductive for France. It is even more so for African countries, already faced with challenges that they are struggling to master. Indeed, after such a speech, how can we refute the image of “lackey of the metropolis” that some so easily stick to many of our leaders? We can therefore understand why Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno himself does not hesitate to chase French soldiers out of Chad. And that the same dynamic is underway in Côte d’Ivoire, after Senegal. As young as he is, Emmanuel Macron is nonetheless the symbol of a certain immobility in Franco-African relations. The French leader prefers by far the cosmetic and superficial approach to reforms in relations between his country and Africa. Which makes more understandable the radicalization with which some of our leaders assert their rejection of the former tutelary power. Even if it means throwing themselves into the arms of another master or turning themselves into new tyrants. And that is the worst that Emmanuel Macron’s arrogance exposes us to. Clearly, a president well below what France has the right to claim.