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France’s Macron takes Africa push to Brazzaville ahead of Kinshasa

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday carried his African tour aimed at renewing frayed ties to the Republic of Congo after inking an economic accord with Angola

France's Macron takes Africa push to Brazzaville ahead of Kinshasa
French President Emmanuel Macron (C) is greeted by Democratic Republic of Congo's Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde Kyenge (R). Photo: Jacques Witt/AFP

Macron landed in the Congolese capital Brazzaville just before five pm (1600 GMT), on the third leg of his voyage after visiting Angola and Gabon. He was due to spend only a few hours in Brazzaville before travelling to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which lies on the opposite bank of the Congo river.

In the Angolan capital Luanda, Macron held talks with his counterpart Joao Lourenco, calling the oil-rich country a “strategic partner in the region”.

Macron, who chaired an economic forum attended by more than 50 French companies, said the “heart of this visit is the strengthening of agricultural partnerships” with Angola.

France was seeking to “build a balanced and reciprocal partnership” with Angola. “This fits in with the idea I have of this economic partnership between the African continent and France,” Macron said. 

“Mindsets have changed,” he said.

France has for decades been involved in the petroleum industry in the Portuguese-speaking southern African country, which is one of the continent’s top crude producers.

Macron’s visit offered an opportunity to explore cooperation in other sectors.

The two governments penned an agreement to boost Angola’s agricultural sector, particularly “climate resilience and water security”, in addition to helping revamp coffee, soya, cotton and dairy production, among other sectors.

The goal should be to develop a “made-in-Africa strategy”, he said.

De-escalation

Before leaving Luanda, the French president thanked Lourenco for his work to restore stability to the region, highlighting his diplomatic efforts in conflict-torn eastern DRC.

He added that there are “legitimate hopes” for a de-escalation in the turbulent region.

M23 rebels have captured swathes of territory in eastern DRC since re-emerging from dormancy in late 2021, and have nearly encircled the trade hub of Goma.

The insurgency has cratered relations between the DRC and its smaller neighbour Rwanda, which Kinshasa accuses of supporting the M23.

Independent UN experts, the United States and other western countries — including France — agree with Kinshasa’s assessment, but Rwanda denies the charge.

Several officials, who requested anonymity, told AFP that an M23 delegation was present in Luanda, but did not not meet French officials.

Anti-French sentiment

Anti-French sentiment runs high in some former African colonies as the continent becomes a renewed diplomatic battleground, with Russian and Chinese influence growing.

On Thursday Macron said the era of French interference in Africa had ended and there was no desire to return to the past.

“The age of Francafrique is well over,” Macron said in Gabon’s capital Libreville, referring to the post-colonisation strategy of supporting authoritarian leaders to defend French interests.

Macron had met Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera in Gabon on Thursday.

The talks came after relations had deteriorated as Russian influence increased in Bangui and French troops left the troubled country last year.

The same day, rights groups in Congo-Brazzaville pleaded for the release of former presidential candidates Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and Andre Okombi Salissa and asked Macron to relay their concerns to Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso.

The pair were each jailed for 20 years in 2016 for endangering state security after they ran against Sassou-Nguesso in disputed presidential elections that were followed by violence.

Congo-Brazzaville’s president has ruled with an iron first for almost four decades.

Macron was to go on later Friday to neighbouring DRC, which was ruled by Belgium during the colonial era.

But there have been reservations about the visit.

Dozens of young Congolese demonstrators holding Russian flags rallied outside the French embassy in Kinshasa on Wednesday to denounce Macron’s visit.

On Thursday, 20 citizens’ movements wrote in a statement that Macron “is not welcome to the DR Congo”.

In a separate statement, some 150 NGOs demanded that Macron backs “calls for sanctions” against Rwanda, and “help the DRC organise its self-defence”.

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FRENCH ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and ‘poo’ Le Pen

From the polls latest to the first big TV election clash, via a lot of questions about the French Constitution and the president's future - here's the situation 17 days on from Emmanuel Macron's shock election announcement.

French election breakdown: TV clash, polling latest and 'poo' Le Pen

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now been 17 days since Macron’s surprise call for snap parliamentary elections, and four days until the first round of voting.

TV debates

The hotly-anticipated first TV debate of the election on Tuesday night turned out to be an ill-tempered affair with a lot of interruptions and men talking over each other.

The line of the night went to the left representative Manuel Bompard – who otherwise struggled to make much of an impact – when he told far-right leader Jordan Bardella (whose Italian ancestors migrated to France several generations back): “When your personal ancestors arrived in France, your political ancestors said exactly the same thing to them. I find that tragic.”

But perhaps the biggest question of all is whether any of this matters? The presidential election debate between Macron and Marine Le Pen back in 2017 is widely credited with influencing the campaign as Macron exposed her contradictory policies and economic illiteracy.

However a debate ahead of the European elections last month between Bardella and prime minister Gabriel Attal was widely agreed to have been ‘won’ by Attal, who also managed to expose flaws and contradictions in the far right party’s policies. Nevertheless, the far-right went on to convincingly beat the Macronists at the polls.

Has the political scene simply moved on so that Bardella’s brief and fact-light TikTok videos convince more people than a two-hour prime-time TV debate?

You can hear the team from The Local discussing all the election latest on the Talking France podcast – listen here or on the link below

Road to chaos

Just over two weeks ago when Macron called this election, he intended to call the bluff of the French electorate – did they really want a government made up of Marine Len Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party?

Well, latest polling suggests that a large portion of French people want exactly that, and significantly fewer people want to continue with a Macron government.

With the caveat that pollsters themselves say this is is a difficult election to call, current polling suggests RN would take 35 percent of the vote, the leftist alliance Nouveau Front Populaire 30 percent and Macron’s centrists 20 percent.

This is potentially bad news for everyone, as those figures would give no party an overall majority in parliament and would instead likely usher in an era of political chaos.

The questions discussed in French conversation and media have now moved on from ‘who will win the election?’ to distinctly more technical concerns like – what exactly does the Constitution say about the powers of a president without a government? Can France have a ‘caretaker government’ in the long term? Is it time for a 6th republic?.

The most over-used phrase in French political discourse this week? Sans précédent (unprecedented).

Démission

From sans précédent to sans président – if this election leads to total chaos, will Macron resign? It’s certainly being discussed, but he says he will not.

For citizens of many European parliamentary democracies it seems virtually automatic that the president would resign if he cannot form a government, but the French system is very different and several French presidents have continued in post despite being obliged to appoint an opponent as prime minister.

READ ALSO Will Macron resign in case of an election disaster?

The only president of the Fifth Republic to resign early was Charles de Gaulle – the trigger was the failure of a referendum on local government, but it may be that he was simply fed up; he was 78 years old and had already been through an attempted coup and the May 1968 general strike which paralysed the country. He died a year after leaving office.

Caca craft

She might be riding high in the polls, but not everyone is enamoured of Le Pen, it seems, especially not in ‘lefty’ eastern Paris – as seen by this rather neatly crafted Marine Le Pen flag stuck into a lump of dog poo left on the pavement.

Thanks to spotter Helen Massy-Beresford, who saw this in Paris’s 20th arrondissement.

You can find all the latest election news HERE, or sign up to receive these election breakdowns as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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