Restitution of designed goods, support for creative industries, listening to local needs … Emmanuel Macron has made “soft power” the keystone of his relationships with the continent.
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On September 19, the organizers of the Bamako meetings announced to the Mali Museum of Mali the detail of the next edition of this Pan -African Biennial dedicated to photography, shifted in December due to the tensions that undermine the country. Sitting behind a table draped in red, the main partners of the event – Andogoly Guindo, the Malian Minister of Culture, Bart Ouvry, the European Union ambassador to Mali, and finally the head of the Swiss Swiss Cooperation Office – Successively took the microphone. A character, however, lacked on the platform: the French ambassador Joël Meyer, expelled in February by the junta in power.
The French Institute, which works for hexagonal influence abroad, must however bring 200,000 euros to the meetings of Bamako – a commitment signed in 2021, before the climbing of tensions between the two countries. Almost half of a drastically narrowed budget after the defection of several partners worried about the political situation in Mali.
In his speech, Minister Andogoly Guindo took care to thank the French contribution. But he walked on eggs. Five days later, on September 24, at the United Nations General Assembly, the acting Prime Minister violently attacked France, accused of “neocolonial, condescending, paternalistic and revengeful practice”.
“In our environment, there is no anti -français resentment, nevertheless assures the architect Cheikh Diallo, general delegate of the Bamako meetings. The only policy we want to conduct is that of culture.” Will it allow to maintain a link at a time when the diplomatic machine is going?
From the speech of Ouagadougou, in 2017, until Montpellier’s Franco-African summit in 2021, Emmanuel Macron made the cultural soft power the keystone of his diplomacy in Africa. With a crucial issue: “convince the continent of our sincerity”, sums up Eva Nguyen Binh, president of the French Institute.
To die from the memorial abscess and counter the work of the undermining led by Russia or China, France has made the restitution of African goods robbed one of its priorities. The return, in February, of the 26 treasures of Abomey to Benin made it possible to “irrigate contemporary creativity, to then circulate it in France and to show it”, declared the 1 er September the French president at the Conference of Ambassadors at the Elysée: “This is what we need to deploy everywhere, because it deeply changes the look that many countries have of France, that their public opinion or their youth have France. “
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