Amzat Boukari-Yabara: "The announcement of the end of Françafrique finally renews it"
French President Emmanuel Macron during the One Forest Summit in Gabon, March 2, 2023 in Libreville.
AFP - LUDOVIC MARIN
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Historian Amzat Boukari-Yabara estimates that, during Emmanuel Macron's tour from March 1 to 4, 2023 in Gabon, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville and then in the DRC, "there is interference
and a staging of the proximity of the French president with French-speaking African presidents
”.
The Beninese researcher also affirms that we “
are on diplomacy that is both velvet and iron
”.
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Emmanuel Macron ended his tour in Central Africa this Saturday, March 4, 2023. After Gabon, Angola and Congo-Brazzaville, he ended his marathon visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
What conclusions can be drawn from this trip to four countries in this sub-region?
Has the establishment of a completely redesigned partnership with Africa that the French president himself announced before his tour been followed up?
“
We remain for me in vassalage relationships
”
Historian
Amzat Boukari-Yabara
deplores at the microphone of
Sidy Yansané
a too rapid visit, where the form may seem new, but the substance remains substantially the same: "
Let's say that there is interference and a staging of proximity of the French president with the French-speaking African presidents, at least that of Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
It's a little different for the DRC because there is the question of the balance between the DRC and Rwanda, of the crisis between the two countries, with the feeling that Macron is playing a balancing act, where the detour via Angola which is still the country that mediates between the DRC and Rwanda in relation to the progress of the M23.
»
► To read also Emmanuel Macron in Kinshasa: the DRC "should not be a spoil of war"
He continues: "
We are really on diplomacy both of velvet and iron, on influence both by maintaining ourselves in the field and by diversifying at the level of Angola, as we have been able to do for Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Ethiopia, Guinea and a few other countries.
But we remain for me in relations of vassalage where the French president, very comfortable in his speeches vis-à-vis his counterparts, holds this famous speech "of truth", but which is nevertheless a
speech
that Obviously he wouldn't stand up to an American president, to a Chinese president.
The very principle of announcing the end of Françafrique finally renews this Françafrique.
»
► Also to listen The challenges of Emmanuel Macron's African tour
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