Macron and Ruto pledge mutal respect and co-investment at Africa Forward summit in Nairobi

Calls for mutual respect dominated the Africa Forward Summit on Tuesday as French President Emmanuel Macron announced new investments and said sovereignty will be key in the new partnership that France hopes to build with Africa.

Investments worth 23 billion euros ($27 billion) will fund various sectors in Africa, including energy, AI and agriculture, Macron said, adding that 14 billion euros ($16.4 billion) will come from French companies and 9 billion euros ($10.5 billion) from African entities.

Macron said the summit marks a financial shift in relationships between the European nation and African countries, including those that once were its colonies.

Not everyone welcomed the summit.

Kenyan environmental lawyer Masakhalia Joseph dismissed it as a “puppeted summit,” saying: “The motive behind what we do as a Kenyan community is always about selfish interest and it is only one way of manipulating and diverting people from the real cause and real problem at the expense of the economy.”

“We actually miss-introduce ourselves and bring up projects which at the end of the day is just to benefit one or few individuals economically and financially,” he added.

Others saw value in the gathering. Catherine Koffman, Green Climate Fund Regional Director for Africa, called Macron's hosting on the continent ‘a positive move’.

"So it says that both its Anglophone and Francophone and the rest of Africa is important for France," she concluded.

President William Ruto of Kenya, which is co-hosting the summit with France, referred to sovereignty eight times in his speech on the summit's final day.

He reiterated that the days of European dependency were over for Africa in favor of mutual respect between cooperating nations.

New partnerships between the African nations and France “must not be built on dependency but on sovereign equality, not on aid or charity but on mutually beneficial investment, and not on extraction or exploitation but on win-win engagements," Ruto said.

The event, which is set to close Tuesday with a declaration that is expected to be signed by all 30 heads of state and government, comes at the height of a fallout between France and its former colonies, mostly in West Africa.

France has long maintained a colonial policy of economic, political and military sway dubbed Françafrique, which included keeping thousands of troops in the region it controlled.

After years of criticism from leaders and opposition parties in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso over what they described as a demeaning and heavy-handed approach, France has withdrawn most of those troops.

It completed the withdrawal of troops from Senegal in July.

Macron said Paris will be respectful of each African country's independence, adding that “sovereignty and autonomy is shared, and your success is our success.”

France’s new strategy, according to Macron, is based on a shared agenda and the “days of offering assistance are behind us.”

“I’d like to focus on co-investment,” he said.

Macron hailed a strong show of unity from the African heads of state and governments as “an image of a united continent with a shared agenda.”