Greeting his newfound African friends, French President Nicolas Sarkozy strongly recalled his erstwhile South African counterpart, Thabo Mbeki.
The bulk of the three dozen African heads of state at this week’s France-Afrique summit towered over their energetic and diminutive host, challenging photographers covering the repeated hugs and handshakes at the impressive Palais des Expositions and the even grander Palais des Rois.
Sarkozy milked the event for every possible drop, determined to show the leaders of the world’s poorest countries how it could be done.
Shades of the 2002 inaugural summit of the African Union in Durban. But on the Côte d’Azur, Sarkozy pushed the boat out for people definitely not on Mbeki’s Valentine’s list.
As expected, Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade headed the list of France’s former colonial subjects who have morphed into unashamed clients of Paris. But the star of the show was President Jacob Zuma. His presence, Sarkozy said repeatedly, added enormous credibility to the “summit of renewal”.
This was the 25th France-Afrique summit, but the first undertaken by Sarkozy in his three years at the Elysée Palace. Officially it marked the relaunch of France’s new diplomacy with Africa — moving beyond the 14 francophone former colonies that gained their independence 50 years ago. It also drew a line under the shady relations Sarkozy’s predecessors had with dubious African leaders, who spirited the fruits of corruption away to Switzerland and made France their bolthole after their inevitable overthrow.
France now has friends across Africa, Sarkozy proudly proclaimed — not least in economic powerhouses like South Africa and Nigeria. Sarkozy used his several turns at the microphone to offer them help in gaining a more imposing international voice, fighting piracy, battling drug trafficking, combating climate change and tackling terrorism.
The first of these offers was his most astute. African hopes of a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council waned with the departure of Kofi Annan as UN secretary general. Sarkozy put these firmly back on the agenda — asserting that it was “an injustice, an anomaly” that a continent with a quarter of the seats on the UN General Assembly and the location of more than 60% of UN peacekeeping operations did not have a permanent voice in the powerhouse.
He left it to his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, to advise his African counterparts to be “realistic”, which means abandoning their insistence on two permanent seats and two more non-permanent seats on the council. Kouchner told reporters that the battle among South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt for a place had produced an “animated” debate.
In return for this largesse, Sarkozy would expect to see “fabriqué en France” (made in France) on many more African roads, bridges and new infrastructural developments in future. Specifically, he wants to see France row back from being eclipsed by China as Africa’s largest trading partner.
Chinese exports to Africa doubled in 2008 to nearly $50-billion (R384-bn), while imports were up twofold at $56,8-billion. Chatham House, the British foreign policy think-tank that produced these figures, shows French figures improved to $38,8-billion for imports from Africa and exports to the continent came to $38,5-billion.
The business-first tone of the summit saw captains of commerce and industry — 80 from France and 150 from Africa — meeting in parallel with heads of state. They agreed on a charter of acceptable business and investment practices that civil society watchdogs — not invited into the inner sanctums but warming seats alongside reporters in the media centre — will pore over.
“Of course there must be business between France and Africa,” Jean-Marie Fardeau, the Paris office director of Human Rights Watch, told the Mail & Guardian. “But an event like this cannot avoid detailed discussion about human rights and the fight against impunity. There cannot be good business and investment without good human rights.”
Zuma’s arrival was clouded by reports in South Africa that MaNtuli, the Durban-based wife accompanying him, was pregnant with his 21st child. His briefing after the summit was cancelled and his appearance at the post-event press conference was brief.
Zuma took repeated pokes at his host for inviting coup leaders from Guinea and Niger and giving them unmerited recognition. This undoubtedly would have cut the French president, who took every opportunity to hail his new “African brother”.