Online Reporter
Tawanda Musarurwa
FRANCE is shifting its relationship with Africa from aid-based cooperation to investment-led engagement, as it positions itself as a major economic partner on the continent ahead of the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi.
“We are shifting from a donation approach toward a more economic and mutual, reciprocal approach,” said France’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Paul-Bertrand Barets, recently, briefing the media alongside Kenya’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe Getrude Nyausi Angote ahead of the Africa Forward Summit, set for Nairobi on May 11 and 12.
France is currently the fourth-largest investor in Africa. Trade between France and the continent surpassed 65 billion euros in 2024.
Over the past 15 years, the number of French company subsidiaries operating in Africa has doubled.
French investment stock on the continent has reached 52 billion euros, generating half a million direct jobs.
These are business figures. And the message being sent to African capitals, including Harare, is that the pipeline is open and widening.
The summit’s co-host, Kenyan President William Ruto, was chosen partly for exactly this reason.
Ambassador Barets said President Macron selected President Ruto as a co-organiser because of Kenya’s president’s well-known appetite for reforming the international financial architecture – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation – institutions whose governance structures have long disadvantaged African economies.
“He is really an advocate of these reforms,” said Ambassador Barets said of President Ruto.
The summit’s agenda will reflect that focus heavily, with sessions devoted to investment-led growth, digital competitiveness, energy access, health systems, food sovereignty and connectivity.
Ambassador Angote framed Africa’s ambitions with equal clarity. The continent is not arriving in Nairobi as a supplicant.
It is arriving with a negotiating position, preparing joint positions for the G7 summit France will host in June, and expecting to leave with a Nairobi Declaration that shapes those conversations.
“We are looking to move beyond aid,” she said.
“We are looking at how we can drive growth in key sectors – digital competitiveness, energy, health and sustainable architecture.”
For Zimbabwe, a country that has spent years navigating the tension between international re-engagement and economic self-sufficiency, the summit offers both a signal and an opening.
French companies seeking African partners across a non-francophone continent are, by definition, looking beyond their traditional stomping grounds.
Meanwhile, Ambassador Barets reaffirmed France’s commitment to actively lobbying for two permanent seats for African countries at the UN Security Council.
“It is totally abnormal that there is no representation of Africa at the UNSC,” he said.
“Nobody can deny the necessity of this reform.”
The UN Security Council, in its current form, reflects the world of 1945 – five permanent members, veto powers intact, with Africa absent.
A continent of around 1,4 billion people, 54 countries, and a growing share of the world’s population, resources, and geopolitical weight holds not a single permanent seat at the table where the most consequential decisions in international security are made.
The African union has long demanded two permanent seats with full veto rights.
France’s explicit endorsement of that position – sustained over multiple administrations, across multiple summits – makes it one of the five permanent members to have done so consistently.
