Emmanuel Macron used the closing of the Africa Forward summit in Nairobi to announce that France will channel €23bn — roughly $27bn — into investments across Africa, in what the Élysée framed as a deliberate break from the aid-and-loans model that has shaped French engagement on the continent for decades. The package combines €14bn from French companies and public funds with €9bn from African co-investors, weighted toward energy transition, agriculture and artificial intelligence.
The choice of venue was as significant as the figure. Kenya is the first English-speaking country to host one of Macron's Africa summits, and the symbolism was not lost on either side. France has lost defence cooperation agreements and basing rights across the Sahel since 2022 — Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and most recently Senegal have all asked French troops to leave — and Paris has explicitly redirected its attention east.
President William Ruto, sharing the stage with Macron, struck a careful tone. "We should no longer think in terms of aid and loans, but rather in terms of investment and what Africa has to offer," he said, framing the partnership as one of "sovereign equality, not dependency." Ruto added that any France-Africa relationship would have to be "win-win" rather than "extractive."
The summit produced a joint declaration committing both sides to a co-investment framework, jointly identified priority projects, and a deliberate language shift away from "Françafrique" — the post-colonial network of relationships that long defined French influence and that has become politically toxic across the continent.
Analysts in Paris and Nairobi were divided on whether the pivot to anglophone Africa can deliver the political traction Macron wants. France's overall trade with Africa has been roughly flat since 2018, even as China's and India's have grown sharply, and €23bn over multiple years is closer to a stabilisation package than a transformational commitment.
For Ruto, the summit doubled as a domestic positioning exercise ahead of his 2027 re-election bid. He framed Kenya, repeatedly, as the natural broker between Africa and Europe at a moment when both the European Union and the United States are recalibrating their engagement.