#Macron #France #committed #Africas #security
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said his country would support Africa’s need for security as he embarked on a three-nation tour to renew France’s ties with the continent.
Referring to a longstanding complaint in France’s former African colonies, Macron also announced that French archives on Cameroon’s colonial era would be opened to allow historians to “shed light” on “painful moments”.
In a speech in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, Macron promised France “not to give up the security of the African continent,” where a jihadist campaign in the Sahel is now rocking countries to the south.
“France remains firmly committed to the security of the continent and is acting in support and at the request of our African partners,” Macron told a gathering of French expatriates.
France is reconfiguring its stance in the Sahel after falling out with the military junta in Mali, the epicenter of a bloody 10-year jihadist campaign in the region.
After a withdrawal from Mali that is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, French anti-jihadi force Barkhane will have around 2,500 troops in the Sahel, just under half the deployment at its peak, French officers say.
The force will also make a tactical change, acting in a support role for local forces rather than taking the lead, they say.
Macron landed late Monday on a three-day tour that will also take him to Benin and Guinea-Bissau.
He met with Cameroon’s 89-year-old President Paul Biya, an iron ruler who has been in power since 1982, on Tuesday.
In his speech, Macron said the reconfigured mission would “extend beyond the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea and second-tier countries that are now facing terrorist groups that are expanding and shaking the entire region.”
The jihadist insurgency began in northern Mali in 2012 and hit neighboring countries Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.
Thousands of people have been killed across the region and more than two million have fled their homes.
There have also been sporadic cross-border attacks on southern coastal countries, fueling fears of jihadist expansion into the Gulf of Guinea.
Macron also pledged French support to countries fighting jihadists in the Lake Chad region, also ravaged by an older insurgency launched by Nigeria’s Boko Haram.
This includes Cameroon, whose Far North region, which extends into the Lake Chad basin, has come under repeated attacks.
– History Archive –
Macron said at a press conference with Biya that France’s archives on Cameroon’s colonial rule would be “fully opened” and hoped historians from both countries would work together to examine “painful moments”.
French colonial authorities brutally repressed armed Cameroonian nationalists before the country’s independence in 1960.
Macron, 44, is the first post-colonial French president and has repeatedly said he will bring to light the dark episodes during colonial rule.
Those incidents have also fueled a narrative from critics who say it is once again meddling in the continent under the guise of security.
Last year, France returned more than a dozen artifacts looted from Benin by colonial troops, easing a source of tension between Paris and its former holdings.
– Africa ‘Priority’ –
Macron’s tour of Central and West Africa is his first trip to the continent since his re-election in April.
France has followed with concern the emergence of Russia, China and other countries trying to gain a foothold in an area it still considers part of its sphere of influence.
The tour “shows the President’s commitment in the process of renewing ties with the African continent,” a French presidential official, who asked not to be named, said ahead of the trip.
It will signal that the African continent is a “political priority” of his presidency, the official said.
Macron also hit out on Tuesday at “nonsense” that he says has been circulating as a result of the Ukraine war.
“We are being attacked by certain people who claim that European sanctions (against Russia) are the cause of the world food crisis, including in Africa.
“That is completely wrong. It’s just that food, like energy, has become Russian weapons of war,” he said.
He criticized “the hypocrisy, particularly on the African continent” that denied the Ukraine conflict was a war.
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