Macron Admits France Lost Africa Ground to China, Turkey

France's day was framed by a presidential admission that Paris no longer holds the ground it once took for granted in Africa, surrounded on either side by reminders that the same questions of influence and information are now being fought in French itself. At the closing session of the 'Africa Forward' business forum, Emmanuel Macron said French firms and administrations had relied for 25 years on historical ties — 'they believed there was a reserved sphere where being French meant everything was automatically open' — and had lost out to China, Türkiye and the United States. He called the African shift toward more competitive partners 'rational' and urged France to give up a 'vertical logic' of aid for co-investment, co-production and co-invention.

Hours later, the political dimension of that contest came home. Frédéric Valletoux, president of the National Assembly's social-affairs commission, accused foreign powers of fuelling medical disinformation around the hantavirus outbreak in order to destabilise France, citing false claims that spread within 48 hours of the first cases and a rising public defiance of scientific discourse. Valletoux defended the government's communication as transparent and prudent and framed the disinformation as a hybrid threat alongside the epidemiological one.

And in a Radio France Internationale and France24 investigation published the same day, a network of anonymous social-media accounts operating mainly in French on X, Facebook and TikTok was shown to be undermining the Moscow-aligned juntas in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger using AI-generated false news reports and counterfeit versions of Russian sites. The accounts attack junta leaders, denounce Russia and promote the European Union, France and the United States — methods copied directly from Russian propaganda playbooks. France's foreign ministry declined to comment. Together with Macron's Africa concession, the day made plain that the contest for influence on the continent and in the French information space is no longer something Paris can describe as a residual privilege.