Civil society groups protest Africa-France summit in Nairobi

President William Ruto and French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of UNGA in New York.  [File, Standard]

The high-profile Africa-France Summit set to take place in Nairobi on Monday and Tuesday has come under heavy criticism, with civil society organisations terming it a reengineering of imperialism.

A section of civil society and pan-African lobby groups have organised a parallel counter-summit in Nairobi opposing what they have termed as France repackaging neo-colonial influence under the guise of economic cooperation and development partnerships.

The Africa-France summit, which will be attended by heads of state and some 1,500 delegates, is expected on focus on economic issues, which the organisers frame as being of interest to Africa and France, including the reform of the global financial architecture, a subject that President William Ruto has been pushing.

Ruto has in the past said global financial systems are outdated and need reform to be more equitable, independent and supportive of developing economies.

Other issues that are expected to be discussed at the Africa-France forum include the renewal of the development agenda, green industrialisation and energy transition, blue economy, sustainable agriculture, AI and digital technologies, health, as well as peace and security.

Civil society lobby groups opposing the summit have organised a Counter-Summit dubbed Pan-Africanism Summit against Imperialism (PASAI) 2026 that will coincide with the Summit that will be co-chaired by President Ruto and French President Emmanuel Macron.

“The France–Africa Summit is not a gesture of goodwill, nor a platform for equal partnership. It is a rebranded offensive of imperialist recolonization — disguised behind the mask of environmental diplomacy and financial reform,” said the organiser of the counter-summit.

“This summit emerges in the wake of France's military and diplomatic retreat from West Africa, where anti-imperialist uprisings expelled colonial troops from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. French imperialism is now turning to East Africa, with Kenya as its principal gateway.”

The Nairobi summit is the first to be held in a non-Francophone country and promises to bring together African heads of states and government officials, big businessmen and representatives from civil society and the private sector.

“The Summit is France's way of announcing to the world that it is returning to its old hunting grounds for raw materials and natural resources for its industries, cheap labour for its investments, and interest from its loans,” said the organizers of Pasai, who include Communist Party of Kenya, the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, the International League of People of Struggle (ILPS) France, Communistes and Materialistes and PGP Institute.

Pasai 2026 will involve a series of webinars and seminars in the lead up to the main event that will be held at Ufungamano House in Nairobi, which holds significant place in political activism and social justice movements in Kenya.

Ahead of the main summit taking place at KICC, Kenya and France signed a defence cooperation agreement that sets the framework for the status and treatment of visiting French soldiers in the country. The agreement was signed in October last year. There are reports that some 800 French troops arrived in Kenya in March 2026 for joint training and maritime security operations in the Indian Ocean.

The lobbies noted that while the cooperation between Kenya and France “will bring bounties to the local big comprador capitalists, big landlords and bureaucrat capitalists, in the form of business partnerships and new sources of corruption, it will bring only misery, poverty and hardship to the African masses.”

They pointed to “the state of West African countries, who after decades of French colonial and neocolonial rule, are the poorest countries in Africa”.