France’s Africa Forward Summit ended Tuesday in Nairobi with French President Emmanuel Macron announcing a new investment package for African countries, framing the effort as a shift in France’s relationship with the continent. Macron said the partnership summit marked a “financial shift” and described the investments as co-investment rather than assistance.
Macron said investments worth 23 billion euros ($27 billion) would support sectors including energy, artificial intelligence and agriculture. He also laid out how the funding would be split, saying 14 billion euros would come from French companies and 9 billion euros from African entities.
Kenyan President William Ruto, who was among the leaders speaking at the closing summit, emphasized sovereignty, using the word eight times in his address. Ruto said new partnerships between African nations and France “must not be built on dependency but on sovereign equality, not on aid or charity but on mutually beneficial investment, and not on extraction or exploitation but on win-win engagements,” according to the report of the proceedings.
Macron sought to align the initiative with a message of mutual respect for independence. He said Paris would respect each African country’s independence and told leaders that “sovereignty and autonomy are shared, and your success is our success.” He also said that “the days of offering assistance are behind us,” adding that he wanted to focus on co-investment.
The summit’s framing arrived against a backdrop of strained relations between France and several of its former colonies, particularly in West Africa. France has faced years of criticism from leaders and opposition parties in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, with complaints described as demeaning and heavy-handed, and Paris has withdrawn its troops from those countries, according to the report. The report also said France completed its withdrawal from Senegal last July.
Macron and Ruto used the Nairobi setting to underscore a bid to update the partnership model. Control Risks Africa director Patricia Rodrigues said France was rebalancing its ties after losing influence to Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Rodrigues said the decision to organize an Africa-France summit on the continent, rather than requiring African heads of state to travel to Paris, was aimed at demonstrating commitment to equality.
Kenyan economist Wangari Muikia said Africa was diversifying its partnerships through cooperation with non-European countries and emphasized growth partnerships instead of historical influence. She pointed to China and Gulf Arab states expanding into African infrastructure, energy and manufacturing, offering governments alternative sources of finance and partnership. Muikia said the biggest question would be whether the new partnerships with France would avoid a focus on exploiting raw materials, warning that without a structural shift, the legacy of “Françafrique” would continue to shape perceptions.
Leaders from both Francophone and Anglophone countries attended the summit, including Senegal, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Rwanda as well as Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Botswana, the report said. As the summit wrapped up, the 30 heads of state and government who attended agreed to a joint declaration pledging cooperation in areas including energy, technology, agriculture and health.