It was a spectacular rhetorical stunt, performed by a professional. Speaking to an audience of invited guests and journalists at the Élysée a week ago in what was billed as a keynote speech on foreign policy ahead of a five-day tour of Africa, Emmanuel Macron began with a warning. Though he had already visited 21 African countries, he drew no “generalisations” from these visits because the idea of “one unique African reality exists only in numerous simplistic plans”. This came as a relief in a country where insulting comments on “this great country of Africa” can be heard, including from French heads of state themselves.
Then....bang! Around two minutes and thirty seconds later the same Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the same Élysée lectern, was caught red-handed in cliché city. “The land of Africa,” he insisted, “is anything but a land of anxiety and resignation”. It was, said the French head of state, a “land of optimism and determination...”
All in all, it was not a bad performance in terms of spouting generalisations.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Just like this rhetorical stunt, the rest of Macron's speech, which was openly billed by his entourage as a key moment in his second term, consisted of the blindingly obvious and clichés, which were then held up as as mini revolutions.
Endless 'partnerships' everywhere
So while it is true that Emmanuel Macron had said at the start that there was not just one Africa, and spoken of the need to avoid “simplistic” plans in a continent that contains 54 states with different social, economic and political realities, that did not stop him delivering an hour-long speech on French policy towards an “Africa” which was clearly being regarded as a whole. “The time has come to make a choice and to know what relations we want to have with African countries,” he thus stated, without apparently envisaging that this choice could consist of a succession of bilateral relations. One can only imagine the raised eyebrows if the French president were to announce that it was time to “make a choice” to determine “what relations we want to have with American countries....”
During his trip to the continent from March 1st to March 5th, Emmanuel Macron visited Gabon, Angola, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Yet while “Africa” remains one entity in the eyes of the French government, France officially no longer has an “African policy”. This is doubtless because such language is too tainted with the old and discredited notion of 'Françafrique', the term used to describe France's post-colonial ties with - and influence over - its former colonies. Instead, the expression “African policy” has been replaced by the idea of “partnership” - a word that the French head of state uttered 24 times during his speech. The message was clear: this time the relationship will be an equal one.
Yet the idea of a “partnership with Africa” is “older than the Fifth Republic” (which was established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958), according to the non-governmental organisation Survie. And it has been regularly revived by French presidents anxious to flog old merchandise in new packaging. In 2009 President Nicolas Sarkozy himself changed the defence agreements linking Paris to several African capitals into “defence partnerships”.
A “less visible” military presence – but to do what?
One of the most eagerly-awaited subjects in Emmanuel Macron's speech was the future of France's military presence on the continent. What was to become of it after the failure of the anti-jihadist Operation Barkhane and the enforced departure of French troops from first Mali and then Burkina Faso? Many commentators, both in France and across Africa, consider that it is high time Paris withdrew all its troops and closed all its military bases in its former colonies for good.
In the end President Macron rejected this option. But in his speech he did his best to portray continuing French military presence as a new departure, even a revolution. In this reorganisation of military deployment, which is renamed, inevitably, a “new model of military partnership”, France's military bases will not be closed but will be “transformed”, in particular by being renamed and 'Africanised'. French troops will not leave but their numbers will be “reduced” (which was expected anyway after the end of Operation Barkhane and the departure of the final French troops from the Central African Republic after their mission there). The French president said the emphasis would now be on “training” and the “equipping” of African armies. The number of bases run or co-managed by France could even increase, with Emmanuel Macron talking of “developing regional bases”.
Once again, this 'revolution' has a distinctly well-worn feel to it. “In reality, the idea of converting bases into military academies is not that new,” Niagalé Bagayoko, head of the African Security Sector Network (ASSN) in Ghana, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. “This approach is strongly reminiscent of the policy pursued by France in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” she said.
Most importantly, this abundance of supposedly new initiatives does not answer the key question: what are the military there to do? What will be the purpose of the soldiers there, what missions will they carry out, and what strategy will they be serving? Perhaps because he himself does not know, Emmanuel Macron responded with a tautology. “We will stay,” he declared, because “we have to be present to do what we have to do.” He also employed an awkward expression to describe the 'new' role: from now on, he insisted, France and African countries had to construct a “new model of closeness and interconnection between our armies”.
Restitution of pillaged property: a Parliamentary bill already exists
One of the rare concrete announcements made by the French president ahead of his trip concerned the restitution of pillaged goods, in particular property taken during colonisation. A “framework law” would be introduced by the culture minister in Parliament in the coming weeks in order to “determine the methodology and criteria to carry out new restitutions,” said Emmanuel Macron. He had already spoken about this project in July during a visit to Benin.
On paper, this is good news for those who think it is time to “return its history to the Africa continent”, to use anthropologist Nanette Snoep's words to Mediapart.
But even before the law has been officially presented it has run into two problems. One is that members of the French Senate already voted for a bill along these lines in January 2022 and they do not see how their own proposal will work with the president's announcement. Secondly, the preparatory work for this new framework law has been carried out by the archaeologist and former director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, who is today under investigation as part of a huge judicial probe into the trafficking of artefacts from antiquity. President Macron paid tribute to him in the speech. Jean-Luc Martinez is suspected of having supported the purchase of objects pillaged from the Near East and Middle East, claims he denies.
A 'humble' approach that struggles to convince
In terms of the style of his speech, Emmanuel Macron tried to adopt a tone which we rarely see in him; that of humility. The French head of state knows that he has faced accusations of arrogance in his dealing with heads of state and ordinary citizens on the African continent. The episode in which he asked, jokingly, whether the head of state in Burkina Faso at the time had “gone off to repair the air con” has still not been forgotten.
But simply repeating that you are “humble” does not mean you are, even less so when you are convinced that you are always right. And that seems to be the position of the French president, for whom France's setbacks in Africa are, first and foremost, the fault of others.
The departure of French forces from Mali? This was the fault of the “Malian political classes” who had “failed to sort out their country”. The hypocrisy of his policies, which consist of paying homage to the revolutionary figure from Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, while also shaking the hand of the cream of despots from Africa's long Françafrique tradition? That was the fault of the “profound transformations” in the world, he said. “Just under six years ago … I had started my speech by citing the words of Thomas Sankara and by announcing that France no longer had an African policy,” recalled the head of state. “Those words are still relevant. But they're certainly not enough faced with the disruption and profound changes that we've seen in recent years.”
Diplomatic bobbing and weaving on Morocco and Algeria
Right at the end of his discourse Emmanuel Macron finally had to broach the subject that he had been careful not to tackle in the speech itself, when the final question in the post-speech press conference was about France's tempestuous relations with Morocco and Algeria. In an exercise of diplomatic bobbing and weaving, the head of state sought to defuse the tension between Paris and the Moroccan capital Rabat, insisting that his “wish” was “really to move forward with Morocco”.
It is not a sentiment that Morocco particularly shares. For months the North African kingdom has been pushing Paris to take a clearer stance in its favour over the conflict on the Western Sahara, where Morocco faces a separatist movement, a movement backed by Algeria. The tension between Paris and Rabat cranked up a notch in January after a vote by the European Parliament, backed by Macron's own MEPs, calling on Morocco to respect freedom of expression. And the mood between the countries has been further soured by the Pegasus spyware scandal and the corruption allegations engulfing the European Parliament.
President Macron sought to distance himself from these affairs. “The scandals in the European Parliament, the issue of eavesdropping that has been revealed by the press, are they down to the French government? No. Has France thrown fuel on the fire? No. There you go. So we have to move forward despite these controversies,” he declared.
Underlining his “friendly personal relations” with the king of Morocco, Emmanuel Macron attacked without naming them “people who try to blow incidents up out of all proportion”. By jettisoning some of some of the principles usually upheld by France on the diplomatic scene, the French president hopes to be able to convince his “friend” Mohammed VI to play host to him, after several months in which Paris has been seeking to organise a visit of reconciliation.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter