French President, Emmanuel Macron has announced 23 billion euros equivalent to approximately 27 billion US dollars in investment for Africa at a major two-day summit hosted by Kenya in Nairobi, in what represents one of the most significant financial commitments France has made to the continent in recent memory.

The pledge was made at the Africa Forward summit, which France organised and brought together dozens of heads of state and business leaders with the stated aim of resetting France’s relationship with Africa after years of deepening tensions between Paris and several of its former colonies.

The investment package is split between 14 billion euros in private and public funds from French entities, and nine billion euros from African investors.

The funds are targeted at four key sectors: energy transition, digital technology and artificial intelligence, the maritime economy, and agriculture. Macron said the combined investments would create 250,000 direct jobs across France and Africa.

In a speech at Nairobi’s convention centre, Macron used the occasion not only to announce the financial commitments but to set out what he described as a fundamentally rebalanced relationship between France and the African continent.

He called on African business leaders to reciprocate by bringing their own investments to France, framing the summit as a departure from the old paternalistic model of engagement.

The French president argued that Africa required investment rather than aid in order to achieve greater sovereignty, and that the era of European leaders arriving to lecture their African counterparts was over.

Macron also used the summit to position Europe as a more trustworthy economic partner than either China or the United States, taking direct aim at Beijing’s approach to the continent. He accused China of operating what he called a predatory logic on critical minerals and rare earths extracting the raw materials from Africa while doing the processing at home, thereby creating dependencies across the developing world. By contrast, he argued, Europe stood for a model of shared autonomy in which neither side would become dependent on a new empire.

The summit was not without controversy. A moment that went widely viral showed Macron walking onto the stage at a youth forum at Nairobi University to scold the audience for chattering while a speaker was presenting, an intervention many observers felt undermined the summit’s message of mutual respect and equal partnership.

The optics, widely circulated on social media, threatened to overshadow the substantive announcements of the day.

On the question of Africa’s colonial history, Macron offered what amounted to a carefully calibrated acknowledgment. He said that while colonialism had caused lasting damage, it could no longer be held responsible for all of the continent’s current challenges, calling on African leaders to take greater accountability for governance in the decades since independence.

He also declared the process of returning African artworks looted during the colonial era to be unstoppable, following the passage last week of a French parliamentary law creating a legal pathway for the repatriation of such cultural artefacts.

Ahead of the summit, deals worth more than 850 million euros were already announced during a bilateral state visit between Macron and Kenyan President William Ruto, including a 700 million euro commitment by French shipping group CMA CGM to modernise a terminal at the port of Mombasa.