Macron called Africa "ungrateful" which angered many countries and was ridiculed

French leaders "must learn to respect African people," said Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno after French President Emmanuel Macron publicly accused some African leaders of being "ungrateful" for France's help in fighting terrorist groups. The statement, which came during a meeting of French ambassadors on Monday, infuriated many African leaders.

"I do not believe that France is in decline in Africa – that is a lie," Macron said. "It is a question of interest, of will. I have a lot of will left to be present in Africa with France.... So I want people to realize: the time of the tutelage, of the guardianship, of France, it is over.... The time has come for us all to assume our responsibilities."

The spat is the latest in a series of controversies as several African countries have expelled Western soldiers, including from France, from their territory in recent months. Within hours of Macron's speech, the leader of the French opposition party Unsubdued France, Jean-Luc Melenchon, denounced the speech in a statement, saying that "these remarks, which are almost unbelievable, illustrate to what point France has entered a state of denial, at the very moment we must, on the contrary, be humble and listen to the African people."

"Today, we have the right to remind France of a few things. It owes nothing to the former colonies, and in fact, it still owes many things. It is not a few African presidents who have forgotten to say 'thank you,' but France itself," Melenchon continued.

The French president's comments followed the announcement by the governments of Chad, Senegal, and Côte d'Ivoire that they had ended military cooperation agreements with France. Déby Itno said, "We are not going to accept being lectured by anyone, especially not by France. We have ended military cooperation with France because it is part of our sovereign decision. This decision was not forced upon us and we did not take it in anger."

France had "not been particularly helpful" in Chad, the president insisted – a jab at Macron, who had said that France was "very helpful" in Mali and Burkina Faso. "The Chadian government terminated its military cooperation agreement with France for one reason only, to regain its strategic autonomy," added Chad's foreign minister, Djibril Koumalara. "In Chad, we were used to being lied to, but to be humiliated like this, never."

"The French are completely and utterly out of place in Africa and in Chad," Koumalara continued. "We have suffered from France's interventions in our country for 60 years and now they want to act as though Chadians don't understand anything, as though our decision to reclaim our sovereignty was made out of weakness or an excess of emotion."

Chad is not alone in its desire for strategic autonomy. Senegalese Prime Minister Idrissa Seck said on the social media site X: "Without the help of Africa, France would be German today. France had to liberate itself with African blood. Africa therefore has no real need for France."

Senegalese author Fatou Diome, who grew up in France, told the French-language radio station RFI that Macron's comments were "an abuse of language." In an interview with the BBC, Diome said, "We must understand one thing – if the French and the Europeans come with their military help, it is because of profit. What profit? It is oil, gold, and everything that we have in our country."

The French left has been the most vocal in its criticism of Macron. Matala Diouf, a former member of France's National Assembly, said, "What the French president said is an absolute scandal. He doesn't understand anything, not the French, not the African, nor the Chadian, nor our common history. He is completely out of context. He doesn't know or doesn't want to know what's at stake. But most of all, it's a lack of understanding of geopolitical context that we are witnessing. The West is really losing Africa, and France is the face of that crisis. What Macron is proposing with his speech is a policy of nostalgia, a policy of the past."

But many on the French right also expressed disagreement with the president, or at least were unimpressed with his handling of the situation. "He is very clumsy," said Philippe Juvin, vice president of the conservative Les Republicains who was France's interior minister until 2021 and was one of the first to condemn the president's remarks.

French Senator Patrick Chaize, also of Les Republicains, echoed some of the president's comments while offering a more conciliatory approach to the situation. "The time of the protectorates is over. France is not on a decline in Africa, but it is necessary to know how to listen to [African] people," he said. "We cannot simply tell our African partners that they are wrong."

While Chaize called for an end to France's "military-centric policy," other conservatives called for an even greater focus on maintaining a French military presence in Africa. "In Africa, French disengagement comes from an ideology: the end of the white man's burden, the end of any commitment," said Philippe de Villiers, founder of the far-right Movement for France. "France is the world's sixth largest economy and the second-largest in Europe. It is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and yet it behaves in a way that is worthy of a dwarf. The time of grandiloquent speeches is over. It is time to be realistic and stop the decline of France in Africa."

French Senator Nicolas Bay, of the far-right National Rally party, said, "The priority now is to ensure that our soldiers can return to their homeland with their heads held high, and that they are not accused of being imperialist and criminal. There is a strong sense in France that Macron has failed to handle this situation well and has lost even more French influence in Africa, if that is possible."

Some conservatives, however, did not believe that Macron had made any mistakes. While Marine Le Pen, the leader of National Rally, has previously criticized France's military involvement in the Sahel, she told RMC Radio that the president was right to insist that France has a duty to help the countries of Africa.

Le Pen's stance appears to be popular with a majority of the French, many of whom support France's military interventions in Africa. In a recent poll by the research and polling firm Ipsos/Sopix, just 23 percent of French people said they wanted an end to French military engagement in Africa; 64 percent said they want France to provide support to African governments in the "fight against terrorism"; and 54 percent say that France is not losing its influence on the continent.

However, Africans have not been impressed by France's military presence in their countries. "It is clear that many French people still do not understand – even after 50 years of decolonization – the degree of humiliation that France inflicts on African states," said former Ivorian minister of culture and writer Frédéric Kaba. "France has not really understood its defeat. But there is no going back. France must respect the choices of African states, and in the end, the Chadians are just as free as the French."

According to the Ivorian author Serge Kany in an interview with the news site Reporter, "Africa's choice of freedom is now being made against Europe and China. We Africans have been colonized for five centuries and we will not be colonized forever. We have to break away from everyone. Africa must be able to think for itself and stop letting itself be manipulated by the West and the East."