That is the way of multilateral diplomacy: the host builds up a meeting and then hopes to hold it together well enough to give the pre-determined final communique some credibility.

What it actually achieves needs time to ascertain.

In that respect the France Africa summit on rebuilding economies buffeted by the COVID pandemic could be seen as a success.

We have Senegalese President Macky Sale saying at the conclusion that there has to be a paradigm change in the the relationship between African nations and their donor countries euphemistically referred to as development partners.

Solutions to problems cannot be imposed by the latter. They must be co-constructed because Africans best know the problems they face.

Rhetoric? Of course. But something refreshingly different.

We also have Felix Tshisikedi, the Congolese President who currently occupies the African Union chair, talking about what the continent has to bring to the table.

He lists good governance, support for the youth and combating corruption. This has been mantra development partners for decades.

The summit, planned for more than a year by French President Emmanuel Macron, calls for a new dynamic in providing vaccines to Africa and in funding the $300 billion shortfall it has suffered from the COVID lockdown.

This requires a sea change in the attitude of donor nations who will need to double the COVID vaccine provided to Africa this year and triple it in 2022.

The IMF, says the communique, must triple the drawing rights granted to African countries to $100-billion and boost the ability of African nations to produce their own COVID vaccine.

Africa has indeed been impacted less severely by the pandemic than the rest of the world.

But this could change dramatically, as it did in India, with only 3% of the population vaccinated.

That figure recurs ominously when looking at the economic impact of COVID on Africa.

The continent’s expected grown this year will be 3% which is half of the global average.

IMF head Kristalina Georgieva provided a chilling takeaway for delegates in Paris. For Africa to recover economically, she says, 40% of its people must be vaccinated this year and 60% by mid 2022.

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The meeting, which will include international economic groupings, is unashamedly a French bid to solidify and broaden relations with African nations.

Macron wants to move beyond the former French colonies to countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

It takes place against a backdrop of waning French public support for France’s gendarme role in Africa and leaders of the continent questioning the value of a series of summit meetings with Western development  partners.

Nevertheless they will fly to Paris – the only Western capital from which large quantities of COVID vaccine have been shipped by a  donor country to developing countries.

In week where we learn that 140 million doses of that vaccine supposed to go to the poorer countries via the COVAX programme will be retained to deal with India’s surge of infections, the summit participants know they will be talking to representatives of the largest vaccine financiers.

The summit will see a rare visit to France by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. This means the still smoldering issue of France’s role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is unavoidable.

Important as it is, other African leaders will also want to move beyond making up the $300-billion shortfall caused by the pandemic.

They want to leave the summit with heartening news for their people about addressing critical shortfalls in potable water, schools and healthcare facilities.

Even though the leaders of countries with which France has active disputes, such as Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso have not been invited, Macron cannot expect to escape pointed question about colonial legacies like the Central African franc, which Africans say binds currencies of former dependencies  too tightly to the French economy.

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For the time being, the 37 year-old has the backing of former colonial power France.

President Emmanuel Macron went to N’Djamena for Friday’s funeral of Mahamat’s 68-year-old father who died at the hands of rebels a day after winning his sixth term as President of the troubled, largely desert country.

Constitutionally, Chad’s parliamentary speaker should have taken power and moved to elections within 18 months.

But the constitution and parliament have both been scrapped by the military council that put the son at the helm.

The country’s borders have been closed and a night time curfew is being enforced

France’s decision to back this move “for reasons of security following extraordinary events” puts its at odds with the international community.

The African Union, which is bound by its basic law to red card any unconstitutional change in government, has called on Mahamat to restore the country to legality.

Chad’s opposition has called the new power structure a “dynastic coup” and its trade unions are calling for a general strike until the constitution is restored.

There is an uneasy calm in Chad following the move that has played into the hands of the rebel Front for Change and Concord in Chad (FACT).

Mahamat realises this. He has made frequent appeals over national radio for peace and insisted that he open to dialogue.

The opposition will not take up this offer while he claims to be president.

France’s support comes because of Chad’s pivotal role in the fight against jihadis in the Sahel – that strip of land between the Sahara and the North African coastal states.

Idriss Deby was an inveterate supporter of the group of five Sahel states.

These include Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Mali.

In N’Djamena on Friday, Macron impressed on their leaders present the need to stand united against militant Islam threatening all their countries.

Will they heed the call from their former colonial power, who provides Chad with intelligence and security?

Or will they fall into line with the African Union that is bound to exclude Chad from the continental body’s deliberations until the constitution is restored?

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Not surprisingly France’s President Emmanuel Macron was among the first world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on winning the US Presidency.

Paris and Washington have a crowded schedule of business, starting with Biden bringing the United State back into the climate change agreement signed  in the French capital four years ago.

Biden will be an extremely welcome participant at the climate summit in Scotland.

France continues to control the file on this make-or-break issue for the world.

Running close behind welcoming America’s more prominent green agenda , France is looking for increased US support for the initiative to fight Islamist jihadis in the that strip of land between North Africa and the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel.

President Donald Trump has effectively told Macron that this French-led initiative is to Paris’ account.

Washington’s has given $8,5 million to Chad to help it counter ISIS terrorism.

This pales next to the boots on the ground and cash contributed to the G5 comprising Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania.

The group was set up in 2014 when Mauritania held the AU presidency.

It has been underpinned by two resolution of the United Nations Security Council.

The world organization has committed 10 000 troops to its anti terror group in the region known as MINUSMA.

France has put its muscle where its mouth is with 3 000 troops from Operation Barkhane .

France stepped into drive out the Islamists who took advantage of a 2012  coup in Mali.

Things have become vary complicated since then and France could do with help form a fellow permanent Western member of the UN powerhouse.

Ibrahim Boubakar Keita, installed in 2012, was unseated in another coup last August which led to Bah Ndaw becoming become the interim president.

Further confusing things, Amadou Toumani Tourè, who led Mali for a decade during which he introduced democratic reforms before he deposed in the 2012 putsch, died in Turkey this week.

It will be impressed on Biden that Germany has provided 900 troops to the Sahel operation and the European Union  has chipped in 50million euros.

Even the cash-strapped African Union has contributed $3 million.

The world is waiting on the new administration in Washington.

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France’s  Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness Minister Franck Riester, reaffirms his country’s commitment to stand by South Africa in these challenging times and to support mutual economic partnerships with South Africa 

A statement from the French Embassy in Pretoria says that as a key partner within the G20 and the United Nations, and also as chair of the African Union, South Africa has been a key partner for France in the fight against the pandemic. 

Riester visit “ sends a strong message of support and solidarity to Africa, following the initiatives taken by President Emmanuel Macron and President Cyril Ramaphosa since the start of the crisis. 

“These initiatives have made it possible, in particular, to set up a collective, coordinated international response under the guidance of the WHO, as well as a new mechanism for research and the pre-purchase of vaccines for vulnerable countries, namely the COVAX initiative supported by France and South Africa. 

“The SANOFI laboratory, with a strong presence in South Africa, has just announced that it will supply 200 million doses through this mechanism, once a vaccine has been found,” concludes the statement. 

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He was speaking on the eve of an African summit in Brazzaville on its oil-rich Mediterranean member.

ends intro

Emmanuel Macron says Turkish warships carrying Syrian mercenaries have been seen entering Libyan waters.

The French President calls this a clear violation of the Berlin agreement on Libya signed earlier this month urging non-interference in the country that has been as war since 2011.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not responded to the French charge.

He has deployed military advisors in Tripoli as part of his support for the Government of National Accord.

In Algeria earlier this week he accused rebel leader Khalifa Haftar of breaking the Berlin Accord

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He was speaking at a summit in Pau he hosted for the five countries facing increasing violence from the so-called Islamist State in Greater Sahara.

President Emmanuel Macron is concerned about the anti-French sentiment expressed in Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso about its military support for the fight against jihadis.

France has 4500 troops in the region where it stepped in to stop Mali being overrun by terrorists.

At the Pau summit he committed a further 220 troops to the operation which will now have a joint command structure.

The six countries present called on the United States to continue what they called its crucial support for their fight.

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The announcement was made when French President Emmanuel Macron visited the Ivory Coast.

At the Petit Palace in Abidjan, French President Emmanuel Macron and his Ivorean counterpart  Alassane Ouattara – who currently leads the Monetary Union of West Africa – announced that the revamped currency will be launched in 2020.

It will be called the ECO and will give the leaders of the eight West African countries that use it greater control over their currency.

The ECO will remain fixed to the euro and will broaden the possibility for the 15 members of the West African grouping ECOWAS to adopt the currency as well.

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President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger has raced to home to deal with a deadliest  rebel attack on his country in living memory.

A military spokesman in Niger says 73 soldiers were killed in yesterday’s  attack on a base in Inates near the border with Mali.

It follows an attack in Agando, also in the west of the country, on Monday that left four soldiers and 14 rebels dead.

The military spokesman say several hundred attackers were involved and they sustained heavy casualties.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called a meeting in Pau, southwestern France next week of the G5 Sahel group to which Niger belongs with Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Burkina Faso.  

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Of course President Donald Trump would back his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsanaro.

They both put the short-term political benefit of climate change  denialism above the long-term interests of generations too young to vote for them. And the man known as the Trump of the tropics showed at the G7 summit in Biarritz last weekend that he shares the American leader’s convenient incoherence.

Without regard for the ten other countries in the Amazon region, Bolsanaro refused to accept the $22 million from the group of seven richest nations on Earth to help fight the thousands of forest fires threatening the area known as the planet’s tree lung.

Then he said, he would take the money if French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew that statement calling him a liar and hoping Brazil would get a better leader.

Finally he cast aside the need for an apology and agreed to accept the G7 help, provided Brazil given a free hand to determine how it would be spent.

Macron spoke at the meeting he hosted of the need to address the fires raging around Africa’s rain forests which are second largest lung on Earth.

There was no reticence expressed by any of the five African leaders – President Cyril Ramaphosa included –  invited to the G7 summit.

They have yet to hear details, most importantly the magnitude of the help.

Experts advise against making too easy a comparison between  the fires in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo showing up on  NASA maps and actually out numbering those in the conflagration in the Amazon basin.

The African fires are not actually in the rain forest. They are a seasonal phenomenon caused by farmers conducting slash and burn agriculture.

Denis Maclean of UN Disaster Risk Reduction   says the damage from fires is unacceptably high on both sides of the Atlantic. 

155000 square kilometers of rain forest have been lost  to fire in the last decade , commercial logging and palm oil cultivation in the past decade.

West Africa has lost 90% of its forest coverage in the past century.

Forest fires kill 300 000 people a year.

With population growth projected to increase fivefold by the end of the century, it impacts dramatically on the sustainability of the planet.

Any money directed to Africa should be used not only to immediately fight the fires but on educating people on their relationship with their environment.  

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