French President Emmanuel Macron embarked on a remarkable tour of East Africa last week — jogging through city streets, cooking ugali, dancing, and performing every conceivable gesture of goodwill toward his newfound friends in non-Francophone Africa. He even proclaimed France the true champion of pan-Africanism, seemingly unbothered by the irony that the ideology was largely conceived as a resistance to powers like his own.

France has been having a difficult time on the continent. Regime changes across West Africa have declared the region a “no-French-zone,” and a younger generation of Africans is embracing anti-French sentiment. Nearly two centuries after France began colonising and exploiting African territories, its president is now extending an olive branch, not to countries where France enjoys linguistic and cultural hegemony, but to nations with historical ties to its former colonial rival, Britain.

Russia is filling France’s military vacuum, China is dominating trade, and Türkiye continues to win influence across the continent while French officials can only complain. The glory of France’s African empire is fading, and Macron knows it. Meanwhile, the King of England was in Washington, confidently celebrating the enduring bonds of his country’s Commonwealth.

To arrest this decline, Macron has come bearing a message: the age of Françafrique is over, and partnership has arrived. But this phrasing is not new as some might think…

What Is La Françafrique?

The term was coined by Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Côte d’Ivoire’s first president and one of France’s most devoted African proteges. It is supposed to be a policy that describes the paternalistic relationship between France and its former colonies. Although positioned as cooperation, it is indeed a web of cultural, political, military, economic and personal influence that France maintained over these African countries.

Houphouët-Boigny’s own record shows what the policy truly represented. He worked to oust Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana and Mathieu Kérékou in Benin, was an adversary of Thomas Sankara’s revolutionary vision, and consistently supported policies that kept Africa fragmented and dependent. His most enduring legacy, perhaps fittingly, was not African unity or prosperity but the construction of the world's largest church. He died in 1993, and the system he helped entrench outlived him.

Françafrique with Nine Lives

“La Françafrique est morte” (Françafrique is dead!) is not a new phrasing. Macron’s declarations are not new. They have, in fact, become part of a modern French rebranding exercise.

On 28th February 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy stood before the South African parliament and declared that France’s ties with Africa were no longer rooted in inequality, exploitation and resentment, but in equality, equity and respect. Yet Sarkozy went on to architect the political crisis that almost consumed Côte d’Ivoire in 2011 and championed the NATO intervention that led to the killing of Muammar Gaddafi and the subsequent destabilisation of the Sahel.

On 12th October 2012, François Hollande addressed Senegal’s National Assembly with similar conviction: “The time of what we used to call ‘La Françafrique’ is over.” Ending Françafrique had even featured in his election manifesto. What followed, however, was a quiet expansion of French military presence across the continent.

Macron’s tour, for all its choreographed warmth, fits squarely within this pattern. The leopard has not changed its spots — a point Macron himself inadvertently confirmed when he publicly scolded a noisy audience during a presentation at the University of Nairobi. Paternalism is in the blood and does not change.

Can France Actually Rebrand?

The short answer is no — at least not without fundamental structural change.

African publics are increasingly sophisticated in reading French intentions. Even so, African governments are not monolithic in their response. Kenya’s President William Ruto warmly welcomed Macron, signing a controversial bilateral military pact that grants France land rights and includes a rolling, five-year renewable arrangement covering maritime security, intelligence sharing, peacekeeping, and humanitarian assistance. France has already deployed 600 military personnel to Kenya, with training of the Kenya Defence Forces personnel underway.

France has also turned its attention to Nigeria, its largest sub-Saharan trade partner, where President Bola Tinubu, a longtime associate of Macron, has visited France more than any other country since taking office. Unlike his francophone neighbours, Tinubu has not been swept up in the tide of anti-French sentiment, making Nigeria and anglophone Africa broadly more hospitable to French re-engagement.

But goodwill and bilateral agreements are not enough to answer the question on whose terms this new partnership is built.

France may generate headlines with announcements of billion-dollar investments, but investment without equity is extraction wearing a new label. The real test lies not in the size of financial commitments but in their structure — whether African-manufactured goods, not only raw materials, gain genuine access to French markets; whether technology and skills are transferred rather than withheld; and whether African nations retain sovereignty over their own resources and security arrangements.

Until France can answer those questions honestly, Macron’s African tour will be remembered as the latest episode in a long-running performance by the colonial power that keeps announcing its own transformation without ever quite completing it. Africa has heard this speech before. It is waiting, this time, for a different ending.

*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.