By Jean-Pierre A.
Botswana’s president is rooting for Africa’s equal partnerships with global economic powers following France’s recent summit with the continent’s political and business leaders in Nairobi,Kenya to deepen economic cooperation.
France seeks to diversify its business partners, markets, and investment opportunities with various African countries. This marks a shift from its more francophone-leaning approach toward broader and more diverse partnerships. Several analysts argue that this is due to France’s fading political and economic influence in some of its former colonies.
Recently, for the first time, Paris held a France-Africa summit, now dubbed the Africa Forward Summit, in Kenya, an English-speaking country in East Africa. France has often maintained close ties with francophone countries, mostly in West and Central Africa. However, amid growing anti-French sentiment in some countries — especially Sahel nations such as Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali — Paris appears to be exploring new markets and trade partners.
Critics say France is rethinking its strategy to woo African nations and diversify its economic partnerships after losing markets and political influence in some other French-speaking countries. For instance, Orano, a mining company that has been present in Niger since the 1970s, has lost local dominance following the military coup that took power in 2023.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Botswana President Duma Boko backed the French initiative, while reminding Africa that the continent should engage with any country by putting forward its own imperatives. “When we get to the negotiating table, we must pursue vigorously these initiatives,” said Mr. Boko.
The Nairobi summit declaration released at the end of the summit contains 10 points that advance Africa’s interests. They include advancing sustainable and value-added agriculture, building resilient health systems, powering growth through green industrialization and energy transition, unlocking the blue economy, and harnessing digital transformation and artificial intelligence, among others.
On the first day of the summit, President Emmanuel Macron announced a $27 billion investment package for the African continent. The comprehensive initiative includes €14 billion from French public and private funds and €9 billion from African entities, focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), energy transition, and agriculture.
Macron said Africa is a continent that he no longer wants France to view as a backyard where “business leaders would somehow have all the rights and where all the contracts would be guaranteed to them because it was francophone Africa.”
Various observers have previously criticized France-Africa relations, arguing that Paris appears to dominate and influence local economic and political decisions. In Niger, Orano, a Paris-based mining company lost some market share after a military coup.
The president of Botswana says that in the past, “previous leaders on the African continent have cut deals that are not so beneficial to their countries and to the continent.”
Intra-Africa Trade
Mr. Boko also advocates for intra-Africa trade supported by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). “We need to develop corridors of trade. We need to encourage flows of trade and investment amongst ourselves as African countries,” he said in the recent interview.
The highly trained human rights lawyer, who was elected in 2024, calls for African-led economic solutions to lift Africans out of poverty.
African countries must, amongst themselves, address their own challenges, some of them legacies of the colonial period, he stressed, adding: “Even the way the infrastructure is laid out, it was never intended to connect African countries. It was designed to evacuate raw materials from Africa.”
As France continues to diversify its trade partnerships on the continent, Botswana is one of the countries where its firm, Orano, operates a uranium mining business.
Mr. Boko further noted that the Southern African country has been offering mining licenses to companies regardless of their origin, as long as they follow local laws. “So, this French company, Orano, has actually been given [licenses],” he confirmed.
According to President Boko, this is not a recent development. “It’s not something that starts now. They already hold prospecting licences, and we anticipate that they will do the drilling, the prospecting, establish the different quantities of uranium deposits.”
The French firm has faced challenges in Niger, one of the Sahel nations with strained relations with France. In 2025, Niamey announced plans to nationalize a uranium mine operated by Orano. The company, which is 90 percent owned by the French state, said that the military junta planned to nationalize the Somair mine. According to the French firm, this was part of a “systematic policy of stripping mining assets.”
The military government in Niger accused Orano of taking a disproportionate share of uranium produced at the site. Orano holds a 63 percent stake in Somair, while Niger’s state-owned Sopamin owns the remainder. However, according to media reports, Niger’s military government said that Orano had taken 86.3 percent of production between the mine’s launch in 1971 and 2024.
Africa’s Strategic Advantage
Commenting on Africa’s interest in economic partnerships and deals that benefit the continent, Botswana’s president explained this by giving the example of his country’s deal with the French firm Orano.
“If you take Botswana, the collaboration in the uranium space is not about extracting uranium in its raw form and taking it away to fix prices elsewhere,” Boko said. “This is about the country from which the uranium is produced playing a leading role in the extraction process, in beneficiation, and in the trade of the commodity.”
Currently, France’s biggest trading partners in Africa are Nigeria and South Africa, as Paris hopes to attract new partners amid competition from major economic powers such as China, Turkey, Russia, and some Middle Eastern countries.
While African countries seek to diversify their trading partners by developing economic cooperation with wealthy nations such as France, Asian countries, and other global economic giants, the international financial system architecture still makes it difficult and expensive for African nations to access financing and capital to fund the continent’s development projects.
This issue dominated the Africa Forward Summit. One of the Nairobi Declaration’s key points is a call for reforms to the international financial architecture.
“We recognize that the international financial architecture must evolve to reflect contemporary global realities and align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” the declaration reads.
Africa’s heads of state committed to: “Work constructively towards an adequate realignment of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) quota shares in favor of the most underrepresented countries, to better reflect members’ relative positions in the world economy, which should reduce representation gaps while protecting the quota shares of the poorest members, including Africa,” the declaration states. It further adds that they “support efforts from countries to access concessional finance under the IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and Resilience and Sustainability Trust.”
The president of the Republic of Botswana further called on foreign investors to come to Africa, but on the continent’s terms.
“Foreign investors must come; we encourage them to come. However, they must come on our terms, not on terms determined by themselves and to the exclusion of the producer countries.”
