A public banter as a symptom. The 18th African tour in eight years of President Emmanuel Macron, which took him at the beginning of the month to Gabon, Angola and the two Congos, closed with a bump during the press conference of the French president and the president of the Democratic Republic from the Congo, Félix Tshisekedi. The African leader exploded. "It has to change the way we cooperate with Europe and France. You have to see us in a different way. 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 berated the Congolese government for its inability to restore military, security and administrative sovereignty. "They should not look for the guilty outside", he said.
This episode of political tension is added to a series of small protests in Gabon and Congo against the excessive influence of Paris, which illustrate 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, along 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 the Wagner mercenaries. Moscow, interested in natural resources, but above all in increasing its geopolitical influence, has picked up the gauntlet and launched smear campaigns against its French rival.
For Equatorial Guinean historian Donato Ndongo, the diagnosis is clear. "Africa is tired of Europe's paternalism. I have had this feeling for over 20 years, I have been warning for a long time that what is happening would happen. Things that were unthinkable before, now happen. We are only seeing the consequences". For Ndongo, “unjust 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 Europe open its borders to Ukrainian refugees and send hundreds of aid trucks while Africans continue to die at the borders. How should we feel?".
Since neither Russia nor China cares about human rights when closing their deals, Kenyan analyst Ken Opalo turns to money in his report La lenta mort de la Françafrique to explain the shift in power. “Over 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 United States, the United Kingdom and France combined.” The numbers support his thesis. In the last 15 years, China's trade in Sub-Saharan Africa has gone from accounting for barely 2% of total imports and exports to 20.5%. In the same period, the commercial weight of France has been reduced by a third, that of the United States is now half the percentage of 15 years ago and that of the United Kingdom has gone from being 9% of the total to 1.88% .
And the binge is not just with France. Last week, Namibian President Hage Geingob abruptly interrupted Germany's ambassador when he protested that the number of Chinese in the African country is four times higher than that of Germans. "What is your problem with this?" Geingob asked him. "The Chinese have not come here to play, which is what the Germans do, by the way. Are you talking about the Chinese? We have allowed Germans to come here without a visa and rolled out a red carpet for them, but many of our citizens are being harassed in Germany. (...) Why don't we talk about how you treat us? The Chinese don't treat us this 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 with a "garden" of human rights and progress and in the rest of the world a "jungle". "These words", explains Ndongo, "were contempt of great ignorance and are another cause of Africa's disinterest towards Europe".
The current situation worries even countries without a colonial past on the continent. This week, the Norwegian Minister of Development Aid, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, warned of the risk of new balances. "If there's anything that keeps me awake, it's the way mistrust is growing and how certain countries are fueling 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 growing interest in Africa."
For the Senegalese political analyst, Saiba Bayo, the change in mentality is taking place from within African society. "Europe continues not to 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 with a role that will be less and less decisive in terms of the design of the new African nations".
