A public slap of weariness as a symptom. The eighteenth African tour in eight years of President Emmanuel Macron, which took him to Gabon, Angola and the two Congos at the beginning of the month, ended with a clash during the press conference between the French president and the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Felix Tshisekedi. The African leader exploded. “He must change the way we cooperate with Europe and France. You must see us differently. You must respect us and consider us as a true partner. And not with a paternalistic look, as if you always know what we need and we don’t”. Minutes earlier, Macron had scolded the Congolese government for its inability to restore military, security and administrative sovereignty. “You don’t have to look for blame outside,” he said.
The episode of political tension is added to a series of small protests in Gabon or Congo against the excessive influence of Paris and which illustrates a growing anti-French sentiment also in other latitudes of the continent.
Some examples go far beyond the anecdote. At the beginning of the year, Burkina Faso followed the example of its neighbor Mali and ordered the withdrawal of French troops from its territory. Both countries, together with the Central African Republic and Guinea, form a quartet of former French colonies that have approached Russia to provide them with security assistance through Wagner mercenaries. Moscow, interested in natural resources but above all in increasing its geopolitical influence, has picked up the gauntlet and launched smear campaigns towards its French rival.
For the Guinean-Ecuadorian historian Donato Ndongo, the diagnosis is clear. “Africa has grown tired of Europe’s paternalism. I have had that feeling for 20 years, I have been warning for some time that what is happening was going to happen. Things that were previously unthinkable now happen. We’re just seeing the consequences.” For Ndongo, “unfair agreements and support for tyrants have led Africans to look the other way. We no longer trust Europe so much and look towards China or Russia. We have learned to distrust Europe. After the war in Ukraine we have seen how Europe opens its borders to Ukrainian refugees and sends aid trucks while Africans continue to die on the borders. How are we going to feel?”
Since neither Russia nor China care about human rights to close their deals, Kenyan analyst Ken Opalo turns to money in his report The Slow Death of Françafrique to explain the change of powers. “In the last two decades, China has replaced France as the main trading partner. China is now a more important partner for African states than the US, UK and France combined.” The figures support his thesis. In the last 15 years, China’s trade in Sub-Saharan Africa has gone from accounting for just 2% of total imports and exports to representing 20.5%. In the same period, the commercial weight of France has been reduced by a third, that of the United States is today half the percentage that it was fifteen years ago and that of the United Kingdom has gone from being 9% of the total to 1.88%.
And the fed up is not only with France. Last week, Namibian President Hage Geingob abruptly interrupted the German ambassador when he protested that the number of Chinese is four times that of Germans. “What’s your problem with that? Geingob snapped. The Chinese have not come here to play, which is what the Germans do. Are you talking about the Chinese? We have allowed Germans to come here without a visa and we have laid a red carpet for them, but many of our citizens are harassed in Germany (…) Why don’t we talk about how you treat us? The Chinese don’t treat us that way.”
Although Ndongo believes that “there is time to fix things”, he denounces the damage caused by statements such as those of Josep Borrell, high representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, who at the end of last year compared Europe to a “garden” of rights and progress and the rest of the world with a “jungle”. “Those words -explains Ndongo- were a contempt of great ignorance and are one more example of Africa’s detachment from Europe”.
The current situation worries even countries without a colonial past on the continent. This week, the Norwegian Minister for Development Aid, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, warned of the risk of new balances. “If something makes me lose sleep, it is the way in which mistrust is growing and how certain countries are feeding it.” “I don’t think it’s a coincidence – he continued – that [Russian Foreign Minister] Lavrov has made several trips to Africa and we see China’s interest in Africa”.
For the Senegalese political analyst Saiba Bayo, the change in mentality is taking place from within African society. “Europe still does not understand that it is not about changing colors or ideologies. Now the question is more internal than external. Europe, Russia or China are external agents whose role is going to be less and less in the design of the new African nations”.
