Partnership of equals? Macron has no Africa's interest at heart

President Emmanuel Macron’s promise of a ‘partnership of equals’ in France’s post-colonial engagement with Africa would have been optimistic if it weren’t a centuries-old contradiction.

France has always preferred puppets in Africa, with a yes-person in Addis Ababa, the headquarters of the African Union Commission. Moussa Faki Mahamat, the Chadian whose tenure ended in February 2025, fired AU ambassador to the Americas Arikana Chihombori-Quao for ‘criticising’ France. He was acting at the behest of his Paris patron.

Chihombori, from Zimbabwe, is an eloquent voice for pan-Africanism. She was fired for denouncing French colonialism, monetary imperialism, and the resource exploitation of Africa. Her message — one Africa for Africans — offended lords of neocolonialism.

In spite of rejection in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, France is unwilling to relinquish its stranglehold on struggling African economies. Macron’s visit to Nairobi is a vain reminder of exploitative French colonialism and its post-colonial contradictions.

France may still be plotting to keep Africa divided for easy exploitation. France wants Africa to remain the playground for Western interests. These interests are united in impoverishing the continent. Djibouti, for instance, is an international playground of former colonists, with France leading the domineering onslaught.

Djibouti hosts French, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese military bases, among others. Located by the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Gulf of Eden from the Red Sea, Djibouti is the gateway to the Suez Canal.

French colonialism in Africa never ended. Former French president Francois Mitterrand once admitted: “Without Africa, France (would) have no history in the 21st century”.

Jacques Chirac in 2001 acknowledged French exploitation of Africa. “We have to acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent,” Chirac, the 22nd president of France, told the 21st Africa-France Summit in Yaoundé, Cameroon. A Macron version of the summit was held in Nairobi, the first time outside the so-called ‘Francophone Africa’.

 “Without Africa, France would slide into the ranks of a third-world power,” Chirac told complicit African presidents during the routine slave-master summit.

Macron, who was in Nairobi to meet African presidents, did not have the courage to make any such honest historical observations. Instead, he was trying to invent a neo-colonial slogan — a partnership of equals — to beguile gullible African leaders.

French colonialism merely evolved into neocolonialism — the weaponisation of politics, economics, culture, or other forms of pressure to control or influence other countries, especially former colonies.

Neocolonialism rides on resource exploitation, monetary imperialism, and military bases. ‘Civilising’ forces in French military bases have always acted when the occasion demanded. They have always ‘tamed’ African presidents who resist France’s ‘civilising’ mission.

Togo’s Silvanus Epiphanio Olympio, Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, and Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi were among the casualties of French monetary imperialism. The late Gaddafi’s ‘Pan-African Currency Project’ was a direct challenge to French monetary imperialism.

France plotted the assassination of Olympio in 1963, in front of the United States embassy in Lome. It was the first military coup and assassination of an African president. The founding father of independent Togo was assassinated for advocating for the unity of Togo and its monetary independence from the Franc zone.

Olympio’s assassination opened floodgates of French-aided assassinations of ‘unco-operative’ presidents in West, Central, and the Sahel region. 

At the peak of French neocolonialism, France controlled and still holds sway, in monetary sovereignty of 14 African countries — Cameroon, Chad, Guinea Bissau, Congo Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Benin.

Luigi Di Maio, a former Italian minister of Foreign Affairs, told an international forum in 2019: “If France didn’t have its African colonies, because that’s what they should be called, it would not be the 15th largest world economy. Instead, it’s among the first, exactly because of what it is doing in Africa.”

What's taking place is another disguise of a partnership of equals, which is really a pact between the donkey and its owner.

Mr Okech is a journalism lecturer