France's African Empire Is Over, Macron Is Trying to Sell That as a Bold New Beginning

Emmanuel Macron has become reliably good at going viral. Early this year, a clip of the French president wearing mirrored sunglasses in Davos was shared millions of times. In Armenia, he recently sang a Charles Aznavour song at a state banquet. And this week in Nairobi, he shouted down a noisy audience at the "Africa Forward" summit. "Hey, hey, hey," he called to the disruptors. The clip is already circulating as a remix on social media.

Viral moments, however, are not political victories. And almost lost in the noise was the fact that Macron used the Nairobi summit to make another major foreign policy push – possibly the last of his remaining term. Together with Kenyan President William Ruto, he hosted an Africa-France summit in an Anglophone country for the first time, deliberately outside France's traditional sphere of influence.

The location choice was not accidental. It was a visible acknowledgment of just how dramatically France's influence in West Africa has collapsed in recent years. The Sahel region has been particularly brutal for Paris. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger pushed French troops out of their territories. Military juntas, with Russian support, have systematically exploited anti-French resentment. The former colonial power, once seen as the region's enforcer, is now widely viewed across much of West Africa as a symbol of neocolonial arrogance.

Macron had promised to break with the old "Françafrique" system when he took office in 2017. That system – a shadowy web of influence networks, backroom deals, and support for authoritarian leaders – had kept Paris entrenched in Africa for decades. In Ouagadougou, Macron spoke of a new beginning between France and Africa. He wanted to defuse the major irritants in the relationship: the CFA franc currency (still co-controlled by Paris), the military bases, and the return of colonial-era looted art.

But many of the announced reforms have been half-hearted or arrived too late. Military bases were closed only under pressure. On the CFA franc, France withdrew from some control bodies, but the currency remains pegged to the euro and is still guaranteed by Paris. On the issue of returning looted art, progress has been slow.

Now Macron is looking east. By pivoting toward East Africa, he hopes to open new markets in a region with less historical baggage. The summit's very name – "Africa Forward" – is meant to signal this shift. Previous France-Africa summits were designed primarily to secure Paris's privileged influence on the continent. Now the official line is investments, infrastructure, and joint economic projects.

There is just one problem: competition is fierce. China is already the most important economic partner in many African countries, including Kenya. Chinese firms have built roads, bridges, ports, and railway lines there. India, Turkey, and the Gulf states are also aggressively courting influence. Macron is arriving late to a region where others have long since established facts on the ground.

The transformation that the French president is selling as a bold new beginning is, in reality, an adaptation to new power dynamics. The old "Françafrique" is not collapsing out of moral awakening. It is collapsing because many African states no longer accept it, and because other powers have long offered alternatives.

That does not mean France will become irrelevant on the continent. On the contrary, precisely because China, Russia, and the United States often pursue their interests ruthlessly, Paris could eventually regain some standing as a more predictable actor. But its special status in Africa is history. The remix of Macron shouting "Hey, hey, hey" might be the last time Paris gets to tell Africa to quiet down.

Written by Freya Stensrud