Макрон провёл саммит Африка-Франция в Найроби, смещая фокус с безопасности на торговлю

NAIROBI, Kenya — France’s effort to reinvent its troubled relationship with Africa was on display here in Kenya’s bustling capital in May, when President Emmanuel Macron convened the Africa-France Summit far from the former colonies in West Africa that once formed the core of French influence on the continent. For the first time, France held its flagship Africa summit not in France or a Francophone African country, but in a nation it never colonized and where anti-French sentiment carries far less historical weight. Macron used the gathering to promote a relationship built on trade and investment rather than the security-heavy engagement that once defined France’s presence on the continent. The choice of Nairobi reflected a deeper reality. The last Africa-France summit held on African soil took place in Mali in 2017, when Paris still sat at the center of regional security efforts and French troops were deeply embedded across the Sahel under Operation Barkhane, the French military’s counterinsurgency effort aimed at pushing back violent jihadist groups.