Stéphane Séjourné, the top of French diplomacy, begins his first African tour in three nations “where bilateral relations are good” | EUROtoday

After one annus horribilis 2023, French diplomacy is eager to get off on a greater footing in Africa. At a time when its affect has collapsed within the Sahel and anti-French sentiment has change into in style rhetoric in sure nations the place Paris was nonetheless preeminent till lately, it’s in search of to show that it stays welcome in others. nations of the continent.

“France must show that it is investing time where its bilateral relations are good. We want to reaffirm that Africa is one of our priorities”, explains a diplomat. For his first African tour since his appointment to the federal government, from Saturday April 6 to Monday April 8, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Séjourné selected stopovers a priori welcoming.

Kenya, Rwanda, Ivory Coast: some 20,000 kilometers from Paris for instance that it “there are fruitful partnerships for France in Africa”underlines the Quai d’Orsay. “Our relationship with African countries is not based on security and historical ties. We don't want to let ourselves be locked in. It extends on all levels, economic, cultural, societal, memorial…”he continues.

“Guarded hunting grounds”

This tour is a part of the road initiated by Emmanuel Macron when he got here to energy. “I am from a generation that did not know colonial Africa” however the “Mandela’s victory over apartheid”, he proclaimed in 2017, earlier than advocating partnerships with new states and in new varieties. But whereas the French president continually appears to be caught up within the ghosts of the previous – establishing a dynastic succession in Chad, finishing up a tour in 2023 of Denis Sassou-Nguesso's Congo or Ali Bongo's Gabon – the brand new minister of international affairs is chargeable for making us neglect missteps and misunderstandings.

Virgin of any previous hyperlink with the continent, Stéphane Séjourné intends to indicate that Paris has understood that Africa “is at the end of a historical cycle” began in the course of the twentieth century^e century, that “of an unfinished decolonization” Or “France had retained “guarded areas” and “regalian prerogatives””because the Cameroonian thinker Achille Mbembé writes within the newest problem of the International and strategic evaluate.

First cease subsequently, at one among France's new English-speaking allies: Kenya. Since coming to energy in 2022, President William Ruto has established himself as a privileged interlocutor for Europe and the United States. At the request of Washington, Nairobi has dedicated to taking the lead of the United Nations intervention pressure in Haiti, whose deployment has been suspended from the institution of transitional our bodies because the resignation of the Haitian prime minister early March.

You have 63.91% of this text left to learn. The relaxation is reserved for subscribers.