French President Emmanuel Macron announced 23 billion euros in investments for Africa at the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi on Tuesday, presenting the package as a financial shift in France's relations with African countries, including former colonies. The money is slated for energy, AI and agriculture, with Macron saying 14 billion euros would come from French companies and 9 billion euros from African entities.
Who Gets to Define 'Partnership'
Macron said France's new strategy is based on a shared agenda and that the days of offering assistance are behind us. "I'd like to focus on co-investment," he said. He also said, "sovereignty and autonomy is shared, and your success is our success." The language is polished, but the structure remains top-down: capital from French companies and African entities is being packaged as equality at a summit hosted inside the usual architecture of state power.
The summit was focused on mutual respect and sovereignty, and Kenya's President William Ruto, who co-hosted the summit with France, referred to sovereignty eight times in his speech on the summit's final day. Ruto said the days of European dependency were over for Africa in favor of mutual respect between cooperating nations. He 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."
What the Summit Says About Power
The event was set to close Tuesday with a declaration expected to be signed by all 30 heads of state and government. That detail matters: the people most affected by these arrangements are not the ones signing the declaration. The summit is a meeting of heads of state, corporate money, and diplomatic choreography, where the language of sovereignty is repeated while decisions remain concentrated at the top.
The summit came amid a fallout between France and its former colonies, mostly in West Africa. France has long maintained a colonial policy of economic, political and military sway dubbed Françafrique, which included keeping thousands of troops in the region it controlled. After years of criticism from leaders and opposition parties in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso over what they described as a demeaning and heavy-handed approach, France has withdrawn most of those troops and completed the withdrawal of troops from Senegal in July.
From Colonial Sway to 'Win-Win' Branding
That history hangs over the new investment pitch. France's long record of economic, political and military sway in the region is not erased by a summit declaration or a new vocabulary of co-investment. The article describes a shift in presentation: from assistance and troop-backed influence to shared agendas, sovereign equality and mutually beneficial investment.
Macron's announcement tied the 23 billion euros to energy, AI and agriculture, sectors that shape daily life and long-term dependence. The split he gave — 14 billion euros from French companies and 9 billion euros from African entities — shows who is still positioned to bring the larger share of capital to the table. The summit's promise of mutual respect is being staged against a backdrop of France's retreat from some of its most openly coercive military arrangements, including the completed withdrawal from Senegal in July.
The declaration expected to be signed by all 30 heads of state and government would formalize the summit's language of partnership. But the facts on the ground remain those of state-to-state bargaining, corporate investment, and the afterlife of colonial power, now dressed in the clean vocabulary of sovereignty and autonomy.