From 7 to 9 October 2021 France held the “New Africa-France Summit” in Montpellier, France. It was conceived as a new Summer for reventing the relation Afrique-France. This report by Mucahid Durmaz is published by Aljazeera. Here is an excerpt:
In a bid to leave the infamous legacy of FrancAfrique – a decade-old shadowy network of French politicians and African elites aiming to maintain French domination in post-colonial Africa – behind, Macron invited hundreds of young businesspeople, artists and researchers to the meeting in Montpellier – but no African heads of state or government leaders.
Since coming to power in 2017, 43-year-old Macron has presented himself as the standard-bearer of a new generation that aims to start a new chapter between Paris and its former colonies after a long and disturbing history that haunts contemporary France to this day.
But specific instances from that troubled past apparently caught him off guard on the stage as he awkwardly listened to young Africans who assailed Paris’s “arrogance” and “paternalism” in its asymmetric relations with African countries and urged him to offer an apology for colonial-era crimes.
Read the full article here.
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