The 2026 Africa-France summit in Nairobi on May 11-12 is the first to be held in an African country that is not a former French colony. It is also the first to be held since the dramatic collapse of relations between France and a number of west African countries – notably Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
The 2026 summit can be understood as the latest example of President Emmanuel Macron’s new Africa doctrine, which he laid out in Burkina Faso in 2017. The doctrine’s three notable messages were:
an apology for colonial wrongs
a neoliberal small-business approach to assistance programmes
the French resolve to develop new alliances outside French Africa.
