(Libreville) French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday in Libreville that the era of “Françafrique” was “over” and that France was now a “neutral interlocutor” on the continent, refusing any interference.
“This age of Françafrique is well over and I sometimes have the feeling that mentalities are not evolving at the same pace as us when I read, I hear, I see that France is still attributed intentions that she doesn’t have, that she no longer has, ”he said to the French community in Gabon.
“We still also seem to be expecting positions from her that she refuses to take and I fully assume that. In Gabon, as elsewhere, France is a neutral interlocutor who speaks to everyone and whose role is not to interfere in exchanges of internal politics,” he insisted.
The Gabonese opposition has accused the French president in recent days of “doubting” President Ali Bongo by going to Libreville in the middle of an election year.
The head of state had outlined Monday in a speech in Paris on the end of the French “pre-square” in Africa the reorganization of the French military system on the continent, calling for new partnerships, far from opaque links and support for leaders. in place.
Taking the example of the summit for the preservation of tropical forests, co-organized by France and Gabon on Wednesday and Thursday in Libreville, Mr. Macron repeated his desire to “build a balanced partnership” and to “carry common causes” with African countries, on the climate, biodiversity or the economic and industrial challenges of the 21e century.
In the morning, he went to a primary forest near Libreville where the Gabonese Minister of Water and Forests, Lee White, presented him with the local biodiversity and the risks of deforestation.
PHOTO LUDOVIC MARIN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Emmanuel Macron
He tasted the passing of the kola nut. “She heats the truckers at night, it’s like caffeine for the students,” Lee White told him.
Emmanuel Macron also assured that the reduction of the French military presence announced on Monday, after ten years of concentration on the fight against jihadist groups in the Sahel did not constitute “neither a withdrawal nor a disengagement”.
It is a question of “adapting this system” by taking into account the evolution of threats and the “needs” of partner countries and by offering more “cooperation and training”, he explained.
“Very clearly, the needs are there”, he underlined, citing for the Gulf of Guinea maritime piracy, clandestine gold panning, “environmental crimes linked to drug trafficking”, itself fueled by a “terrorist movement that we also know in the Lake Chad region”, in reference to the jihadist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap).
This reorganization concerns the French bases in Libreville, Abidjan and Dakar, but not that of Djibouti, which is more oriented towards partnerships in the Indian Ocean.
It implies “the presence of more regional soldiers on our bases and therefore to share, to co-manage these bases”, explained the president.
The Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu specified that the French forces were going to train more African executives in France as well as in Africa, while reducing their manpower on the continent. The new device must be discontinued by July 14, he said.