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Hundreds of young people from African “civil society” attend the France-Africa summit in Montpellier on Friday, chaired by Emmanuel Macron. An unprecedented event aimed at forging new links with the talents of the continent, but criticized by some African intellectuals who demand concrete actions.
An unprecedented event aimed at African youth. Friday, October 8 opens in Montpellier an Africa-France summit of a new kind aimed at “refounding” the relationship between Paris and the continent.
For the first time since 1973, the start of the France-Africa summits (now Africa-France), no head of state from the continent is invited. This new format should make it possible, according to the French presidency, “to listen to the words of African youth” and “to get out of obsolete formulas and networks”. Clearly, to break, again and again, with “Françafrique”, its opaque practices and its networks of influence.
This summit is being held at a time when the influence of France in its former precinct is increasingly disputed, particularly by Russia, and when Paris is in open crisis with Mali and Algeria.
The “angry subjects” on the table
It will therefore be young entrepreneurs, artists, sportsmen from the continent who will meet their French alter egos and from the diaspora to discuss economic, political and cultural subjects. Then a panel of twelve young Africans, from Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia, South Africa, Kenya … will meet in the afternoon with President Macron in plenary session.
This panel was selected at the end of the dialogues carried out for months across the continent by the Cameroonian intellectual Achille Mbembe, responsible for preparing the summit. In his report, submitted Tuesday to the French President, the philosopher considers in particular that France is too disconnected “from new movements and political and cultural experiments” carried by African youth.
>> See also: Mbembe report calls for recognition of “France’s African roots”
He also points out that of all the disputes, “none is as corrosive as France’s alleged support for tyranny on the continent.” The recent Chadian example, when the French president immediately lent his support to the military junta set up by son Deby after his father’s assassination, is on everyone’s mind.
French military interventions, sovereignty, governance, democracy, “the angry subjects will be on the table”, insists the Elysee. “Africa is worked by two forces: those of innovation and those of closure, of the forces of death. The main question that young people will ask Macron is: which side are you on?” Thursday, Achille Mbembe at the microphone of France inter.
An initiative that is controversial
The postcolonial thinker has been severely criticized by some of his African peers for agreeing to lead the summit.
In a column published Thursday on the senegalactu.info site, the Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop denounces “a false kick in the anthill”. “The face-to-face meeting between Macron and African civil society would have been much more credible or even fruitful if we had at least felt on the ground concrete signs of his desire for change,” he writes.
For their part, the intellectuals of the pan-African collective Cora criticize “a civil society tailored to Montpellier”, “Africa which succeeds”, “to give the illusion” that France is “listening to the African populations and of their intellectuals “.
Beyond the political subjects, the summit gives a large place to the economic actors. It was preceded by meetings over two days, in Paris, with 350 African entrepreneurs.
Another round table will be devoted to the issues of restitution of cultural property, one of the areas in which the most critical intellectuals recognize Emmanuel Macron’s strong gestures.
For the Canadian philosopher of Guinean origin Amadou Sadjo Barry, “the lines have moved symbolically, there have been important gestures” such as the return of goods looted in Benin, the announcement of the end of the CFA franc, the recognition of France’s “overwhelming responsibilities” in the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994 …
At the end of the summit, the French president, likely candidate for re-election in seven months, could make general announcements, based on the proposals of Achille Mbembe. Among them, the creation of a Fund intended to support initiatives to promote democracy, programs allowing greater student mobility, or the establishment of a “Euro-African forum on migration”.
With AFP
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