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President Emmanuel Macron seems to suffer from congenital foot-in-mouth whose outbreaks appear to be triggered by encounters with Africa and Africans. In January 2025, Macron drew a sharp rebuke from Chad and Senegal – and opprobrium from across the continent – after claiming that Sahelian states owed their sovereignty to France and that they had forgotten to say thank you.
Clearly, Macron has taken no account of advice to “shut up more” and has yet again offended Africans. At the Africa Forward Summit that was recently held in Nairobi, Kenya, Macron made the extraordinary claim that France sees itself as “the true Pan-Africanists”, prompting Togolese activist and writer Farida Nabourema to scathingly observe, “I have been trying, with genuine intellectual effort, to locate the precise category of moral and cognitive failure that produces a statement of that magnitude, delivered with that degree of composure, and I have concluded that it does not fit neatly into any existing taxonomy. It is its own species, and it requires a name that has not yet been invented, something that sits at the precise intersection of historical illiteracy, institutional shamelessness, and the specific brand of civilizational arrogance that your republic has refined across five centuries into something almost indistinguishable from a natural disposition.”
At a panel later the same day, in full school teacher mode, Macron took to the stage to “restore order,” as he put it, condescendingly demanding silence from the audience. Danièle Obono, a lawmaker for the hard-left party France Unbowed, posted on X, “It’s stronger than him: as soon as he sets foot on the African continent, he can’t help but behave like a colonizer.”
Under Macron’s watch, France has increasingly lost its footing in its former colonies in West Africa, and even as he turns to English-speaking East Africa in search of new alliances that he claims will be based “on equal footing partnerships”, back home in France the campaign for the 2027 presidential election is heating up and, according to some, Danièle Obono’s party stands a very good chance of facing it off with the far-right National Rally in the second round.
As Macron’s Renaissance party (described by some as a party of the “extreme centre” – a style of governance that claims to transcend the left-right divide and relies on strong, top-down executive power to impose its will) fields former prime minister and youthful party leader Gabriel Attal, France Unbowed has again launched into the arena 74-year-old Jean-Luc Mélenchon, an orator of great talent and a redoubtable adversary in any political debate.
Mélenchon is on his fourth try and with each bid has inched closer to his objective, taking 11.10 per cent of the ballot in 2012, 19.58 per cent in 2017, and 21.95 per cent in 2022, coming in third place just behind the far-right National Rally candidate, Marine Le Pen, who took 23.15 per cent of the ballot and faced off Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the presidential election.
With each presidential bid, France Unbowed has refined its political programme. Published in the form of a book titled L’Avenir en Commun (A Common Future), it is a participative endeavour that encourages citizen mobilization over traditional political alliances. This radical foundational programme proposes a departure from neoliberal market-driven economics in favour of an anti-capitalist and eco-socialist approach; the establishment of the Sixth Republic with a constitution that returns power to the citizens, including the power to recall elected officials by referendum; fundamental social reforms including a return of the retirement age to 60 years, raising the minimum wage, and heavy taxation of extreme wealth; and renegotiating European treaties to remove austerity policies and pursue a non-aligned stance in global politics. Mélenchon’s party is effectively proposing a radical departure from Macron’s pro-business reforms and a complete overhaul of how the French do politics both at home and internationally.
Combative and confrontational in his approach, Mélenchon is a divisive figure, often derided by his political opponents as merely populist. However, philosopher and sociologist Geoffroy de Lagasnerie has argued that politics is inherently conflictual and that by refusing to adopt the traditional moderate, polite political discourse and rejecting what is deemed “acceptable speech”, Mélenchon’s party is challenging the establishment, doing away with the genteel façade of modern politics to confront the harsher realities of class struggle and social inequality.
In effect, the social and economic crisis facing the French is profound, and the political climate fraught; France has changed prime ministers four times since the snap elections called in June 2024 that denied Macron a parliamentary majority, leaving in their wake political instability and a polarized political class. Social inequality has grown, with the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population holding almost two-thirds of the national wealth while one in seven people live in poverty. According to official data published in 2025, racist, xenophobic, antisemitic, and anti-religious offences have been on the increase while press freedoms have declined, partly because of media concentration; Ninety per cent of media outlets are in the hands of some 10 billionaires and their conglomerates, a problem that Mélenchon has said he will address if he is elected president.
But while the far-right National Rally has without surprise continued to reach for the immigrant bogeyman to explain the country’s social and economic woes thereby fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia among the increasingly disenfranchised middle and working classes, Mélenchon is preaching a “new France”, one that is also young, urban, and many-hued, one in which descendants of generations of immigrants – many with origins in France’s former colonies in Africa – have their place. And indeed, descendants of those who fought on the French side of the Algerian war of independence, or of the Tirailleurs sénégalais who fought alongside French forces in the two World Wars, or the many others that followed in their wake to work in the coal mines, and the many more that arrived in later years, have stepped up to the political stage, some even winning the recent municipal elections under the banner of France Unbowed.
Worryingly for Mélenchon’s party, however, Viginum – the French agency tasked with protecting the country against foreign digital interference and information manipulation – has confirmed that BlackCore, an Israel-based company specialized in the provision of political destabilization services, targeted several France Unbowed candidates during the campaign for the municipal elections that were held last March. False accusations (of rape, rabid antisemitism, and the sale of a calendar of nude photos in support of Palestine) targeting three candidates were circulated via social media; two of the candidates lost their election bid. The identity of those who contracted the BlackCore services has not been established, and the government has been accused of “shelving” the report concerning the destabilization campaign targeting France Unbowed.
Emmanuel Macron is coming to the end of his mandate and is barred from running for another term. In the event that Jean-Luc Mélenchon takes the helm, and such an eventuality is no longer beyond the realm of the possible, the Kenya-France Defence Cooperation pact signed in April 2026 between presidents Macron and William Ruto will be up for review, as will all bilateral development cooperation agreements signed with France.
Mélenchon’s “common future” manifesto calls for bilateral development cooperation predicated upon non-interference in the affairs of African countries, and respect for human, social, ecological, and democratic rights. Mélenchon has also pledged to cancel “odious debt (…) contracted by dictators with the sole intention of enriching the clan in power, or engaging in actions that run counter to the public interest”.
In the race to the Elysée Palace, the field promises to be crowded, but Africa could do worse than wake up to a Jean-Luc Mélenchon presidency in early May 2027.
