Macron turns to English-speaking Africa

HE COOKED with a Kenyan influencer and ran with Eliud Kipchoge, a long-distance runner. He even danced to a live performance of Jerusalema, a South African hit. Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Kenya from May 10th to May 12th certainly felt different. Indeed it was the first time France has held an Africa summit in an English-speaking country. After bruising recent setbacks in Francophone Africa, the French president is trying to shape a different link between France and the continent.

The English-speaking African leaders present seemed happy to join the club. For Kenya the summit offered a chance for William Ruto, the president, to play regional leader. He pushed, as usual, for a permanent seat for Africans on the UN’s Security Council and for credit reforms to encourage investment in Africa. Mr Macron has invited him to the G7 summit next month in Evian.

Instead of focusing on aid, the summit put business at the centre of what Mr Macron and Mr Ruto called a “partnership of equals”. They signed over $1bn in bilateral deals, including an $820m joint venture to revamp a port terminal in Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast. Accor, a French hotel chain, is backing ten Nigerian hotels. Eutelsat, a French satellite company, is expanding broadband in 20 African countries.

Other African leaders also went to talk business. Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president—who has visited France 12 times in the past three years—brought along leading entrepreneurs. Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, hinted at plans for a giant oil refinery in Kenya. In total €14bn ($16.5bn) of French public and private investment and €9bn of African investment were signed off. That includes pledges that may not come to pass and plans that were already public. But it is still significant. The UN puts foreign direct investment inflows to Africa at just $59bn in 2025, despite increasing interest from China and the Gulf.

Since he was elected in 2017, Mr Macron has tried to move away from an Africa policy weighed down by post-colonial baggage and widely criticised by a younger African generation. On his watch, France has returned cultural artefacts from museums to Senegal and Benin, reset relations with post-genocide Rwanda and reformed its role in running a currency shared by west African countries. Anglophone alliances seem to be paying off. A new Ipsos poll suggests that 93% of Kenyans and 90% of Nigerians have a good image of France, far more than in French-speaking countries.

Yet the shift has been halting, and at times a fiasco. Mr Macron has presided over a forced retreat from the Sahel, where France used to conduct a long-running counter-terrorism operation. After coups had installed hostile regimes that turned to Russia for security instead, France was kicked out of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (none of which were invited to the summit).

In Nairobi Mr Macron claimed that France had felt “no offence”, but that Mali’s coup leaders had “not taken the best decision for their country”. Jihadists recently took control of swathes of the north from Malian and Russian forces. Yet few seem to regret France’s departure. “It’s not because the Russians have failed that the image of France has improved,” says Ladji Ouattara, head of Observatoire du Sahel, a research body.

Mr Macron’s trip this week was about charting a new path. But it also felt like a farewell tour. He cannot constitutionally stand for re-election in 2027. In some African quarters he, and his tendency to scold, will not be missed. But his successor could be Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella from the populist right. Talk of partnership could swiftly give way to diktats limiting visas and migration.■