French President Emmanuel Macron has embarked on a three-country East African tour — taking in Egypt, Kenya and Ethiopia — in a concerted effort to redefine France's role on a continent where its influence has been visibly eroding. The tour, which began in Egypt on Saturday, will culminate in Addis Ababa on Wednesday, where Macron is expected to meet Ethiopian officials and hold talks at the African Union headquarters on peace and security.
The centrepiece of the trip is the "Africa Forward" summit in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, on Monday and Tuesday — the first such summit Macron has co-hosted in an English-speaking African country since taking office in 2017. The deliberate choice of venue signals a strategic pivot: France is seeking to broaden its partnerships beyond its traditional Francophone sphere in West and Central Africa, where a series of military coups since 2020 — in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger — led to the expulsion of French troops and the arrival of Russia-backed mercenary networks, including the Wagner Group and its successor Africa Corps. France also relinquished its last major military base in Senegal last year. In the vacuum left by French withdrawal, Russia has expanded its footprint, in part by exploiting deep-seated anti-French sentiment rooted in decades of perceived postcolonial interference.
In Egypt, Macron inaugurated a new campus of the Senghor University of La Francophonie alongside President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, framing the French language as "a magnificent universalist project" and a bridge across Africa's multilingual landscape. The two leaders also aligned on Middle East tensions, expressing support for dialogue and negotiation to secure the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway whose closure has already affected traffic through Egypt's Suez Canal — and calling for unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza.
The Nairobi summit is expected to focus on investment deals in clean energy, artificial intelligence and education, with several commercial agreements between French and Kenyan companies set to be signed. France has also pledged to support Kenya's push for a fairer global financial architecture for heavily indebted African nations. A defence cooperation pact signed with Kenya last October — covering intelligence-sharing, maritime security and peacekeeping — illustrates the kind of "new partnership" model Paris is promoting. French imports from Africa have grown by roughly a quarter between 2021 and 2024, according to data from the International Trade Centre, and a €300 million investment agreement with Nigeria was signed in 2024.
Yet France faces stiff competition. A $1.5 billion highway project in Kenya was cancelled and awarded to Chinese firms last year, a reminder that Beijing and Gulf states have leveraged deep financial resources to build influence across the continent. Analysts describe the tour as a genuine rebranding effort — moving France away from its often murky postcolonial relationships towards more transactional, equal partnerships — but caution that questions about its long-term influence on the continent remain very much open.