Emmanuel Macron was the recipient of a letter on Monday from nearly 100 senators from across France’s political spectrum. The signatories lamented the ‘failures and setbacks’ of the Republic’s policy in Africa in recent years and called on the president to rethink French strategy on the continent. Listing some of these failures – the rejection of France by Mali, the Central African Republic, Burkina Faso and, most recently, Niger – the cross-party group warned that there could be more trouble in store in the Ivory Coast and Senegal, where anti-French sentiment is growing.
Then there is North Africa, where relations with Morocco and Tunisia aren’t what they were and, in the case of Algeria, they are positively hostile.
Even Macron’s staunchest supporters – of which there are increasingly few in France – would be hard-pressed to say he has been successful in Africa
Some of this of deterioration can be attributed to Russian interference – on a recent visit to Moscow, Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune called Vladimir Putin a ‘friend of humanity’.
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