NairobiFrance’s Africa summit opens Monday in an anglophone capital for the first time.
France was expelled from military bases across the Sahel; Kenya is now its primary strategic partner on the continent.
The two-day summit ends Tuesday; its outcome tests whether Paris can rebuild African ties after the Sahel setbacks.
Sources: Le Monde.fr, Yahoo
FRANÇAFRIQUE
For six decades after independence, France maintained a tight web of military, monetary, and political control over its former African colonies — bases, currency pegs, intelligence ties, and personal relationships between presidents. The system had a name in Paris: Françafrique. It was assumed permanent.
THE SAHEL EXPULSIONS
Between 2022 and 2024, military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger ordered French forces out — ending Operation Barkhane, France's largest overseas military deployment. Chad followed in late 2024. In under three years, France lost the entire counterterrorism architecture it had spent a decade building.
WHY KENYA
Kenya is anglophone, never colonized by France, and runs the most capable military in East Africa. Nairobi hosts the largest UN office outside New York and Geneva, anchors regional diplomacy on Sudan and DRC, and President Ruto has positioned himself as a continental spokesman. For Paris, partnering with Nairobi signals that French Africa policy is no longer about France's former empire.
THE CFA QUESTION
Fourteen African countries still use the CFA franc, pegged to the euro and historically requiring deposits at the French Treasury. Reforms announced in 2019 renamed the West African version 'eco' and ended the deposit requirement, but the peg remains. Anglophone Africa watches the arrangement with suspicion; for Kenya, a French partnership carries none of this monetary baggage.
THE COMPETITION
France is not pivoting into an empty field. Russia (via Africa Corps, the Wagner successor), China (infrastructure and Belt-and-Road financing), Turkey (drones and construction), and the Gulf states (ports and agriculture) have all expanded African footprints as France contracted. Kenya itself hosts a major Chinese-built railway and a US counterterrorism base at Manda Bay.
THE TEST
Summits produce communiqués; the question is whether Paris can offer Nairobi anything the others can't. France's traditional African toolkit — troops, currency, personal ties — does not transfer to anglophone partners. What replaces it is the unanswered question of the Macron Africa doctrine.