00:00 French President Emmanuel Macron is making his annual address to French ambassadors today.
00:05 He's been covering so far a series of topics, including France's role in Africa
00:10 and what he called a weakening of the West's role in the world. Let's listen.
00:15 I believe our policy is the correct one. It's based on the courage of President Basu,
00:24 on the efforts of our diplomats and our ambassador in Niger, who will stay despite
00:29 pressure from coup leaders. We do not recognize them. We support the president who's not resigned.
00:34 France 24's Angela Diffley was listening to that speech with me, a speech that's still going on
00:40 after about a good hour and a half. Angela, Macron earlier was warning against what he
00:45 called this risk of a weakening West. Tell us a bit more about that.
00:48 Yeah, he was also referring to the BRICS+ summit recently, this idea that Western dominance is
00:57 really being challenged now. And he said, you know, this is what's happening. We need to take
01:02 notice of it. There is, if you just look at the Ukraine war, often a perspective from what we
01:09 sometimes call the global South or any other countries outside the US and Europe, that when
01:13 a country is invaded elsewhere in the world, it is seen as a territorial dispute. When it is a
01:22 country which involves Europe or the US, it is seen as a matter of universal values and something
01:28 quite different. That really irritates countries outside the West. And there's this growing
01:32 challenge to the West. I think he wanted to talk a little about Africa as well, which he alluded to
01:41 so much in that speech. Of course, we've all seen what's been happening in Niger
01:46 in recent weeks. And this is an anti-Western narrative, but also an anti-French narrative,
01:53 which is increasingly taking hold in Africa. We saw it in Mali, in Burkina Faso, in Niger.
02:00 Emmanuel Macron was very forceful in his defence of French interventions in those countries. He
02:08 made absolutely clear to the ambassadors, it needs to be got across to the world that those
02:13 governments invited France in to help them try to combat jihadist forces. And he was very concerned
02:22 about this narrative taking hold. These wars are often not popular within France. A lot of French
02:28 soldiers die in them. And he was very keen to get across that this isn't France rampaging around
02:35 Africa. Governments asked France in, they did make efforts to combat jihadist limited success.
02:43 He now says, we must be careful not to overstay our welcome. It is clear that these interventions
02:50 need to be reframed. He talked about a new partnership with Kenya, which of course is not
02:56 a former French colony. So that is something quite different. And he also mixed it with
03:02 problems surrounding immigration here in France. And this idea that France as a former colonial
03:10 power in Africa is being portrayed around the world as not dealing well with its former colonies,
03:16 being too close to governance. He said that France had perhaps made a mistake in being sometimes
03:23 very good with its relationship with certain governments and nurturing that, but ignoring
03:29 civil society and failing to take into account just how popular or unpopular those governments
03:35 were. There are also implications, he said, for people who have backgrounds from those countries
03:43 who now live in France. And he said, again, it needs to be got across to the outside world.
03:47 Yes, France has made mistakes as all former colonial powers have, but some of the positive
03:54 elements of France's relationship with its former colonies, both outside in Africa and amongst
04:01 descendants of those people within France. Right. And we heard President Macron speaking earlier in
04:05 that clip that we played for you about France's unwavering support for the president of Niger.
04:10 We're going to focus a bit more on that in just a moment. But Angela, just tell us what else
04:15 struck you from this speech, which Macron said was really a lucid assessment of the world,
04:19 in his opinion. Yeah, this was an extraordinary speech, looking at the entire world, although he
04:26 said he wouldn't. We even talked about polar regions and also looking pretty much at the future
04:33 and all its problems, ranging from mineral resources to artificial intelligence to climate
04:39 challenges. And of course, the fact that everyone needs to pull together to work on them.
04:44 Two very important takeaways. He talked about the European Union having a greater role
04:49 with NATO. France has recently become much more supportive of Ukraine joining NATO. That is new.
04:56 It's not new in this speech, but it's a recent development. It vetoed the idea of NATO membership
05:02 or blocked it before. It knows that it's not going to join very soon because the US is against it.
05:06 And the other idea, which is fairly new, which he alluded to, is expansion of the European Union.
05:11 France in the past was very much against that. Angela, thank you for that. France 24's Angela
05:16 the dip lane.
