By Enyichukwu Enemanna
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday announced new investments in Africa at the second day of the Africa Forward Summit in Kenya, assuring that sovereignty will be key in the new partnership with the continent.
The investments worth 23 billion euros ($27 billion) will be deployed in sectors such as energy, AI and agriculture, Macron said.
He added that 14 billion euros ($16.4 billion) will come from French companies and 9 billion euros ($10.5 billion) from African entities.
Macron said the summit marks a financial shift in relationships between the European nation and African countries, including those that once were its colonies.
President William Ruto of Kenya, which is co-hosting the summit with France, referred to the word “sovereignty” eight times in his speech on the final day of the summit.
He reiterated that the days of European dependency were over for Africa in favour of mutual respect between cooperating nations.
New partnerships between the African nations and France “must not be built on dependency but on sovereign equality, not on aid or charity but on mutually beneficial investment, and not on extraction or exploitation but on win-win engagements,” Ruto said.
The event ended with a declaration signed by all 30 heads of state and government in attendance. It comes at the height of a fallout between France and its former colonies, especially Francophone countries in West Africa.
Macron said Paris will be respectful of each African country’s independence, adding that “sovereignty and autonomy is shared, and your success is our success.”
France’s new strategy, according to Macron, is based on a shared agenda and the “days of offering assistance are behind us.”
“I’d like to focus on co-investment,” he said.
Macron hailed a strong show of unity from the African heads of state and governments as “an image of a united continent with a shared agenda.”
