French President Emmanuel Macron arrived Wednesday evening in Libreville, the first stage of an African tour intended according to Paris to open a new era in relations between France and the continent.
Emmanuel Macron, who landed at 7:30 p.m. (6:30 p.m. local time) in the Gabonese capital, immediately took the direction of the presidency for a dinner with his counterpart Ali Bongo Ondimba, noted an AFP journalist.
Rise of anti-French resentment
The French leader will participate Thursday in a summit on the preservation of the Congo Basin forests, co-organized by France and Gabon, in the presence of a dozen heads of state and government from the region.
Emmanuel Macron is making his eighteenth trip to Africa since the start of his first five-year term in 2017. This is the first visit by a French president to Gabon since that of Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) in 2010. The leader of the French State will then travel to Angola, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo until Saturday evening, before returning to Paris on Sunday morning.
He begins this tour in Central Africa two days after having exposed from Paris his African strategy for the next four years, against a backdrop of rising resentment against France in his former
African "
backyard ".
Read alsoSmalto, state affairs in Françafrique
Emmanuel Macron advocated "
humility
" on Monday, reported an upcoming reduction in the French military presence in Africa and called for a new "
balanced
" and "
responsible
" partnership with the countries of the continent.
At the Gabonese presidency, he will give Wednesday evening to Ali Bongo a copy of an ethnomusicological fund of 900 sound sequences, recorded in Gabon between 1954 - i.e. before independence - and 1970.
This collection - the originals of which are kept at the Museum of Arts and Traditions of Gabon - illustrates all aspects of Gabonese oral and musical tradition, from songs and stories to worship ceremonies.
It comes from the work of the French songwriter Herbert Pepper, who composed the anthem of Senegal, and the ethnomusicologist Pierre Sallée.