Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during an economic forum in Kinshasa, March 4, 2023. The French president is in Kinshasa for the fourth and final leg of an African tour. JACQUES WITT/AFP
DECRYPTION – The French president, visiting Kinshasa, played ambiguity by refusing to condemn Rwanda and supporting a ceasefire to end the conflict in the east of the country.
In the tour of Central Africa that Emmanuel Macron has just completed, the last stage, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), did not appear to be the most important. Stops in Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville seemed trickier choices to shed light on the “new software” French policy in Africa praised by the French president last week. Ali Bongo, successor to his father at the head of Gabon over very controversial elections, and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who has more than forty years of power in the Congo, certainly do not embody the renewal very badly.
However, it was in Kinshasa that the most important point of this trip was played out: to show that France still has the ability to exert influence on the continent at a time when its heritage and its role there are increasingly contested. , starting with its former colonies. The DRC, the largest French-speaking country in the world, is a perfect theater to illustrate this supposed new policy…
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