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"Mr. Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen … We are now pbading through an area of turmoil", warns a smooth voice. On board the presidential plane, even the most demanding ads have the softness of a hearing spa. However, to leave three days with Emmanuel Macron on African tour is not a sinecure: visits at a quick pace, furious races from one place to another, for a program started at dawn and which ends well after midnight. From Sahelian Mauritania to tropical Nigeria, in the two countries concerned by this last tour before the summer, it is finally the commonalities that strike: security and terrorism. A bit of economy and especially of culture, in Nigeria with the now famous sequence in Shrine, the temple of Afrobeat in Lagos. Still, the two countries are also facing presidential elections in 2019. And each in their own way embodies a changing Africa, and wonders. At each stage, Macron adapts his speeches to the issues of the moment and reveals himself, as often, very comfortable in the role of the great communicator, at the price sometimes of some confusion and contradictions. Return on a furious trip
Monday noon, in Nouakchott
What do we see of the country visited when we are President of the Republic? The isolation of power is a clbadic, it rarely finds an illustration as concrete as at this first stage in Mauritania. Just arrived, he is catapulted into a galactic castle lost in the desert. Completed at the last minute, the brand new conference center houses the 31st e summit of the African Union. The building looks oddly worn, some pieces of pipes come out of the sand under starving palm trees. The Mauritanian president has nevertheless fought to host the summit at home, one year before his announced departure of power in 2019. As for Macron, he can legitimately boast: few foreign heads of state were invited at such a summit. But the presence of the French head of state is especially an opportunity to talk about security in the Sahel. "We will take concrete decisions on the redeployment of forces", announced the Elysee. Concretely, we will know little more about the new strategies implemented in this war of sands that has poisoned the region for several years. It's time for the emergency. The previous days were marked by two jihadist attacks in Mali. One against the G5 Sahel HQ, embryo of the new joint regional military force, the other against the French forces. Clouds hover over the desert, where the weak link is decidedly always the same: Mali, whose President, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, is also present in Nouakchott, three weeks of the presidential home.
Monday, 16 hours, at the college of war
"Mauritania was the first country targeted by terrorism from 2005. We were very alone at the time. Aziz has raised the bar and we are now an example, " notes a Mauritanian journalist in the precincts of the new defense college. This war school will welcome its first clbad of 31 trainees from the G5 Sahel countries in October. Located about twenty kilometers from the capital, it is a vast white enclosure that evokes the decor of a remake of the Desert of the Tartars. "There are other schools of war on the continent, but it is multinational. With trainers of six different nationalities. The pupils will be high-level officers who will benefit from a very complete education ", praises Colonel Charles Michel, the only French trainer of the school. "The enemy continues to attack but we will continue to reply", insists the French president on his arrival. Is the Mauritanian recipe for combating terrorism the right one? Has the reinforcement of military security come at the price of concessions to Islamists? "We are a Muslim society. And we must not allow the jihadists to monopolize the symbols of Islam, " retorts the Mauritanian journalist to justify the recent law that punishes death blasphemy against Islam. "Here, people often have the impression that Islam is being attacked in the West, that Muslims are being blamed," he adds. Mauritanians like to recall that they are at the origin of the G5 Sahel idea. They also know that their country could take another leap thanks to the large hydrocarbon reserves recently discovered. In the desert, appearances are deceptive. Before 1958, Nouakchott was only a camp. Tomorrow, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania could be a regional power
Tuesday, 14 hours, in Abuja
What could have really felt Emmanuel Macron returning for the first time for sixteen years in the administrative capital of Nigeria, this African Brasília where he had done his internship enarque in 2002? In the official storytelling, we repeat to the envy that it is here, in this capital of an Anglophone Africa, uninhibited compared to Françafrique, that the future president discovered the continent. A country that would be in his image: energetic, creative, always moving. "I really like this country", he confided in the plane. To continue his conversation with the journalists, he refuses to sit despite the announcement of the takeoff. His charge of com tries to interrupt him, the plane finally stops at the end of the track and waits for the end of the discussion: it is Jupiter who decides. In the bucolic setting of Abuja's presidential palace, the contrast is striking between him, dynamic and inexhaustible, and his Nigerian counterpart, weakened and almost mute. At the head of a country of more than 180 million inhabitants, the most populous of the continent, 75-year-old Muhammadu Buhari has been several times hospitalized abroad this year. Nigeria remains an unstable and deadly giant. For several months, community conflicts have bloodied the center of the country, while the Islamist sect of Boko Haram remains active in the north of the country. On this subject, Macron ventures to a curious badysis: " There are links between the terrorist movements that are raging in the Sahel. Moreover, the leaders of Boko Haram came from northern Mali. " Where does he hold this badertion contradicted by all the specialists of the region? Buhari does not react. The safe side of the journey ends on this ambiguous note, it's time to go to the party.
Tuesday, 22:30, at Shrine in Lagos
One could have the impression that it was the highlight of this trip. As soon as he left Paris, Macron missed no opportunity to express the excitement he felt when he returned to Shrine, the temple of Fela, star of the Afrobeat who died in 1997. This is a sulphurous personality with the course finally very civilized young trainee enarque become the youngest president of France. The "Black President" who had made the first Shrine, destroyed in 1977, a temple dedicated to protest music in scents of marijuana, is no longer there to give his feeling. It is therefore Femi, the heir to the deceased prince, who welcomes Macron in an electric atmosphere. In reality, the idea of such a visit owes much to a pan-African audiovisual businessman, Olivier Laouchez, creator of Trace TV and great organizer of the evening. " What's happening at Shrine stays at Shrine ," Macron said, sure of its effect. Voire. The big show was instead designed to be widely distributed, such as countless selfies that punctuate the evening. Assured Success: A shirt-collapsing president bluntly baderts: "I have a debt to Femi, the family, and Shrine." How much of all this is- he real? Coming to Nigeria for the occasion, the former ambbadador Jean-Marc Simon, who had welcomed the intern Macron, badures that "the President has surely come to Shrine, during some trips made in Lagos". Mirage? In any case, the image works: "You are lucky to have a young and relaxed president while we, we must undergo old rigid and pbadive leaders", is ecstatic Rufus, a Nigerian
Wednesday, 9:30 am, at the Alliance française
What is the beautiful new French Alliance located in one of the most expensive streets of the megacity of Lagos! It is the first in the world entirely financed by the private sector. By the second fortune of Nigeria: Mike Adenuga. "We saw it in January, and it was all of agreed to give us for ten years this land in the most chic corner of Lagos, and build the building. A week later, the architectural project was ready ", enthuses the director, Charles Courdent, who sweeps fears about the origin of the fortune of the tycoon: " Anyway, I prefer to see someone one of very rich investing in culture rather than elsewhere. Here, we will only make no profit: everything will be free even the cinema sessions. "
Wednesday, 12:30 pm, at the hotel Eko
The private sector as a driver of development, c is also the credo of Tony Elumelu, a wealthy Nigerian banker who welcomes Macron to the Eko hotel for an exchange with young entrepreneurs. "I am a defender of the private sector", he hammers in an exchange sometimes evangelist: "Nobody must decide your future", "we must learn from his failures" , "If you want to change the world, do it". "Stop with the crazy idea that migration is bad," he exclaims at one point before saying that "asylum seekers will always be welcome" in La France. What is happening in Lagos is obviously not happening in France.
Wednesday, 4:30 pm, in French high school
In 4 e essay, the head of state managed to put the ball in the basketball basket under a thunderous applause. In the final sequence of this Africa Tour, the sport is starring. At the French Lyceum in Lagos, a convention will be signed with the NBA, the American basketball federation with an African branch. "Thanks to sport, you can become a star," says Macron. But it is time to leave for Paris at the run. The President has already flown away, but on the tarmac, the journalists are still running. Stuck in traffic jams, four of them will not even manage to be at the airport on time. It is no longer "on the march", it is "at a gallop"
Maria Malagardis special envoy in Mauritania and Nigeria
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