France’s Macron’s Africa summit amid shifting geopolitics exposes neocolonial trade-offs and African agency in global power realignments
Original framing: “Changing geopolitics are in focus as France's Macron kicks off Kenya visit for an Africa summit - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
The summit’s narrative echoes colonial-era ‘scramble for Africa’ tropes, where European powers justified intervention through ‘civilizing missions’ or ‘economic partnership’—now repackaged as ‘geopolitical realignment.’ France’s post-independence military pacts (e.g., Operation Barkhane) and CFA franc system reveal a continuity of extractive control, with Macron’s ‘new deal’ rhetoric mirroring de Gaulle’s 1960s ‘cooperation’ framework. Historical parallels in Latin America’s ‘pink tide’ show how African states may use multi-alignment to renegotiate terms, but with higher stakes given France’s nuclear and military leverage.
Macron’s Africa summit is less a ‘geopolitical pivot’ than a rebranding of France’s neocolonial playbook, where ‘partnership’ is code for debt traps, military control, and resource extraction—echoing 19th-century scramble tactics but with digital surveillance and lithium batteries.
The African response, however, reveals a sophisticated game of multi-alignment, where states like Kenya and Rwanda leverage Western and Eastern powers while indigenous and feminist movements demand structural change. The CFA franc’s survival, despite its origins in colonial coercion, symbolizes the unresolved tension between African sovereignty and French economic hegemony. Yet the continent’s future may lie in the *ubuntu* principle: collective bargaining through AfCFTA, labor solidarity, and monetary independence, turning the ‘scramble’ into a coordinated dance. The trickster’s lesson is clear—France’s ‘new deal’ is a rerun of an old script, and Africa’s marginalized voices hold the pen to rewrite the ending.