LHowever, the need to renew relations between France and Africa had not escaped him. “There is no longer any African policy for France! »exclaimed Emmanuel Macron at the University of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso, in November 2017, six months after his election to the presidency of the Republic. From the country of Thomas Sankara, revolutionary president in power from 1983 to 1987 and symbol of resistance to neocolonialism in Africa, the President of the Republic had promised a “profound change” and the end of “false speeches in which we sometimes locked ourselves”.
His predecessors François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy had already promised, before him, an overhaul of Franco-African relations. But this time, the hope aroused was even greater. The atypical profile of the youngest president of the Ve Republic – showing itself as breaking with the traditional parties and the French political class linked to the twists and turns of “Françafrique” – then appealed to African youth with sovereignist aspirations and who did not recognize themselves in their old leaders. « I am, like you, from a generation that never knew Africa as a colonized continent”insisted the Head of State to the applause of the Burkinabé students.
By displaying his proximity to the people rather than to their presidents – as during the Africa-France summit in Montpellier, in October 2021, to which only African civil societies were invited –, Emmanuel Macron “instilled the idea of a new world, but without making it a reality”analyzes economist Kako Nubukpo. For the former Togolese minister, the president’s African diplomacy “suffered from a form of contradiction between discourse and practice, which made it illegible for Africans”. “He has not managed to escape the French paradox resulting from independence and which has always consisted of saying: “We are leaving, but without leaving; we change, but without changing” », he adds.
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