SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: a French president lecturing Africa on "predatory logic" while Paris controls the currencies of fourteen nations and extracts uranium for its own nuclear grid, according to anti-imperialist activists, is not partnership. It is projection.

https://x.com/sov_media/status/2054658991314161758

Sovereign Media

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, declared that China "operates according to a predatory logic: it does the processing at home" and creates "dependencies with the rest of the world".

When comparing France and China’s relationship with Africa, there is a staggering irony in this claim. France's own relationship with Africa, analysts point out, has been defined by resource extraction for French energy needs. Niger provided approximately 19-20% of the uranium that powers France's nuclear plants, according to journalist János Hajdu, with three mines that were majority-owned by the French multinational Orano. Researchers describe this as raw extraction: France takes the minerals, processes them at home, and sends nothing back but dependency.

Meanwhile, data shows that Beijing has been Africa's largest trading partner since 2009, offering roads, railways, and ports with repayment terms that Western powers haven’t matched.

Then there is the matter of the investment institutions Macron defends. Scholars, such as Nsizwazonke Yende, have documented how the IMF and World Bank forced Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) on African nations for decades — imposing austerity, slashing public services, and demanding privatisation as the price of loans. The research demonstrates that these programmes systematically undermine state sovereignty and subordinate African economies within the global system.

France's own CFA franc remains the clearest symbol of this architecture. Fourteen African nations are still required to deposit 50% of their foreign reserves in the French Treasury, giving Paris veto power over their monetary policy.

China has its own problems, critics acknowledge, but a French president lecturing Africa on "predatory logic" while Paris controls the currencies of fourteen nations and extracts uranium for its own nuclear grid, according to anti-imperialist activists, is not partnership. It is projection.