The Pan-Africanism of it all

I love Adelle Onyango.

I want to say that upfront, because what now follows started with a post of hers on Instagram – a reaction to what’s been happening in Nairobi these past two days – and I want you to understand why her name, specifically, unfurling this thread of thoughts in my mind, isn’t an accident.

If you don’t know Adelle, in one take: In all the time I’ve known her, she’s one of those people whose commitment to saying the true thing, even in the most uncomfortable of spaces, isn’t a performance. It’s just what she does.

October 2021. Emmanuel is hosting a summit in Montpellier, France. The short version: No heads of state invited. Thousands of young Africans instead – artists, businesspeople, athletes… The stated purpose: To demonstrate a “new” France-Africa relationship, built on listening to youth.

Adelle takes the stage. Emmanuel is part of her audience – on stage with her, in fact, as part of a panel presentation. He’s seated to her right, doing that thing that big men with power do to show that they are paying attention even when they’re being told things they don’t like: Nodding and taking notes. Even with the slight quiver in her voice, her eyes radiate her conviction.

Then she unloads the question:

(I’m revisiting all this with good reason, so stay with me for a moment.)

And she continues with:

The room erupts.

Later, she says this about why she spoke the way she did:

Macron is in that room. He hears her. He hears all of it. He hears the specific indictment, delivered by a young Kenyan woman with no deal to seal, in front of thousands (and later, thanks to the world we live in, millions) of witnesses.

He deflects. He says he doesn’t believe in “a politics of repentance.” He promises France would introduce an honest assessment of its colonial past into school curriculum. Bla-bla-bla, and all the non-commital politico-speak.

He doesn’t apologise. He doesn’t commit to ending la Françafrique.

And then. And then.

Five years later.

Emmanuel Macron arrives in Nairobi, looks at a room of African heads of state and young Kenyan leaders, and declares, “We are the true pan-Africanists.”

He is, of course, part of the “we” he’s just referred to. Declared with the pomposity of Ludwig Krapf discovering Mt. Kenya.

I’ve only been online intermittently for most of the day. It’s 10.49pm as I start typing this – because I’d just been on Instagram, and Adelle’s post was the third or fourth on my feed.

It found a nerve, and I’ve been typing, googling, deleting, typing, and repeat ad infinitum, ever since.

Some bits of this may feel rough or unpolished. Good. Take a red pen, and circle your corrections and add your additions.

Chapter I: The pan-Africanism of it all.

I read it again.

I looked for the missing word. The misquote. The out-of-context fragment that, once restored to its surrounding sentence, would suddenly make sense. Surely there was a “not” somewhere. Surely there was a qualifier. Surely “we are the true pan-Africanists” was a badly excerpted portion of a longer sentence that began with “critics say” or “some have argued” or even the relatively humble “we all aspire to be.”

Lol. Nope. There was no missing word.

Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, stood at the University of Nairobi (that’s where it was, right?) on the 11th of May 2026, looked around the room of mostly black faces, and said – without apparent discomfort nor hint of shame – “We are the true pan-Africanists.”

And then. And then.

I want to be precise here, because it matters to what’s coming next. He didn’t just claim the label. He made the case. He said, with his full chest:

Transformative revelation, Manu. Can I call you “Manu”? It’s a Kenyan thing – we shorten names like that. Especially with people we know. You know, partners.

Manu said:

Manu said:

To be a proper writer, I’m supposed to start with the historical context. The Pan-African Congress of 1919. Du Bois. Garvey. Nkrumah. The OAU. I’m supposed to do the whole thing.

I shan’t do that.

Many have already done the history lesson. Many in West and Central Africa – and across Africa, really – have been dissecting the history time and time again, increasingly so over the last 5 years. They do it with more rigour and fury than I can muster right now, and they name every name that needed naming. Farida Bemba Nabourema does it wonderfully – I’ve linked her piece at the end of this.

Which is why I’ll skip right to the frame of mind, because I’m very curious. The specific frame of mind that makes it possible to stand in Nairobi in 2026 and say that sentence with that degree of composure, full chest. Not rhetorically curious. Actually curious. What is the reasoning? What is the internal logic that arrives at, “I, Emmanuel Macron, representative of the nation that recognised and supported Blaise Compaoré’s government for 27 years after he orchestrated the coup that killed Thomas Sankara, am a pan-Africanist”?

A few things, first.

One: “We believe that Africa is a continent.”

Mr. President. Monsieur le President, Sir. Emmanuel. Manu.

A continent is the baseline entry-level fact about a landmass. The Merriam-Webster dictionary believes Africa is a continent. A Grade Four pupil in Kisumu who has looked at the back of an atlas for exactly twelve seconds believes Africa is a continent. A man in a bar in South Texas who has never left his state and whose entire knowledge of the continent begins and ends at “they have lions” believes Africa is a continent.

Believing Africa is a continent isn’t a political philosophy. It would be bold of me to believe I’m vegan because I had bread and kachumbari for breakfast. By this logic, Google Maps is the most pan-Africanist technology ever created – it knows not only that Africa is a continent, but can locate you within it, to within 3 metres, and will suggest the fastest route to the nearest Airtel Money agent. (Because we’ve left M-Pesa – that app is very annoying.) Is Google Maps a pan-Africanist? Should we be redirecting our solidarity statements to Sundar Pichai?

That’s where Manu started. I tried to find the charitable interpretation and I suppose I can chalk this up to another of my many failures. There is no world in which “we believe Africa is a continent” is a qualifying statement for pan-Africanism. None.

Next.

Two: “It is the youngest in the world, and therefore has an extraordinary demographic dividend.”

Friends. This is a market size assessment.

Let me just – let me say that again slowly. This. Is. A. Market. Size. Assessment.

And, perhaps, a labour force evaluation.

“Demographic dividend” – which refers to the economic growth potential associated with a large working-age population relative to dependents – is a phrase you find in a McKinsey report called Africa: The Next Consumption Frontier. It’s the phrase I’ve heard an actual Unilever executive using in pitch before discussing plans to expand into “underserved markets.” It’s what private equity firms say right before launching their “Africa strategy” arm.

So. Just to be clear. His argument for being a pan-Africanist is that he finds young Africans investable. He is saying: I, Emmanuel Macron (Manu), notice that your young people represent a significant economic opportunity and I would like to be present for that opportunity. Forget what history’s implications for such an assessment brought with it – just know that I, Emmanual Macron (Manu), have seen how wonderfully young and able-bodied your people are.

Because I, Emmanuel Macron (Manu), am panafricanist.

In front of Africans. In Nairobi. In 2026.

Pan-Africanism – the actual tradition – is specifically the political philosophy that said African peoples aren’t a dividend. They’re not an investment opportunity to be assessed on a market day by an outside observer. They are fully-formed human beings, with political agency, with the right to determine their own futures on their own terms. Framing a continent’s young people as a “demographic dividend” – as value waiting to be realised – and specifically by a party whose country was so deeply entrenched in (and enriched by) the shameless extraction of our resources and our very being – is the exact reasoning pan-Africanism was constructed to push back against.

Next.

Three: “It is the one with the greatest growth in the world.”

So France is a pan-Africanist because France has noticed Africa is growing and would like to be present for that growth.

That’s the pan-Africanism.

If showing up when there’s growth makes you a pan-Africanist, then every multinational that launched an “Africa strategy” is a pan-Africanist. Juzi juzi BlackRock were in Nairobi and Nakuru – they must be pan-Africanist. The IMF and its ceaseless assault on Kenyans’ disposable income must be pan-Africanist. The CFA franc – the currency mechanism that kept 14 African economies tethered to the French treasury for decades – was, because we’re following this logic all the way down, a pan-African financial cooperation instrument. The French-trained soldiers who removed heads of state who refused to cooperate were performing acts of pan-African solidarity with the local business community.

We’re all pan-Africanists, guys.

There has to be a name for what he’s doing. “Appropriation” is too light. “Historical revisionism” is too academic. “Audacity” is accurate but incomplete, because audacity implies awareness of the risk, and the composure with which Macron delivered this suggests the risk-detector isn’t firing.

Give me a moment as I google something.

(insert wait music here)

Ok. We may have something here. It’s sounds academic enough to do a bit of lifting.

Let’s call it victorious retroclaiming: The act of claiming ownership over what you failed to destroy. The logic of the person who claims dominance over something, fails, then later announces that the thing which survived their ruthless attempts at extraction and destruction is, in fact, their contribution to the world. That’s what this feels like.

And yet.

And yet the failure of the project of destruction grants no ownership over what you tried to erase. It grants you only the lesson – and it’s only a lesson if you’ve actually registered and taken it.

Pan-Africanism survived France. It survived the napalm over Cameroon – documented by survivors and historians across decades, confirmed in broad terms by a joint Franco-Cameroonian commission in January 2025, and to this day neither confirmed nor denied by France officially. (Typical.) The counterfeit currency flooded into Guinea after Sékou Touré had the dignity to say “Non” to de Gaulle in 1958. The poisoned cups. The midnight arrests. Thomas Sankara – who stood before the OAU in July 1987 and told African leaders to stop paying their odious colonial debts, who said, “I speak not only on behalf of Burkina Faso but of all those who suffer,” who was assassinated ten weeks later. Whose killer France then recognised as Burkina Faso’s legitimate president and supported for twenty-seven years of uninterrupted rule.

Twenty-seven years.

Pan-Africanism survived all of it. And Macron’s argument, distilled, is: therefore it is mine too.

Chapter II: The exiled summit of it all.

Kenya. English-speaking Kenya. Never a French colony. No CFA franc history. No French administrative buildings because France never built any here.

This is where France chose to hold its Africa summit.

The France-Africa Summit has existed since 1973. Always in France or Francophone Africa – in the places France had colonised, whose currencies it controlled, whose military it maintained, whose leaders it managed when necessary. The heartland. Mali. Burkina Faso. Niger. Côte d’Ivoire. Cameroon. Senegal.

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger are not hosting this summit.

I won’t be ambivalent on this: The phrase that a lot of press outlets use – “France’s military withdrawal from West Africa” – is doing a lot of diplomatic work on France’s behalf.

France was expelled.

Mali told French forces to leave in 2022 and requested the withdrawal of the French ambassador. Burkina Faso followed in 2023. Niger gave France forty-eight hours to remove its ambassador after the July 2023 coup. Senegal’s president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, said French military bases were incompatible with his country’s sovereignty and shut them down.

Expelled. Not “withdrew.” Not “reorganised its footprint.” Expelled.

France 24, covering the summit this week: The event “comes amid France’s military withdrawal from West Africa and renewed debate over its post-colonial role on the continent.”

Renewed debate.

The people of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger looked at what French “partnership” had produced – actually produced, in terms of tangible outcomes for themselves as the actual people living in those countries – and they made a judgment. This is not working for us, they said. It has never worked for us. Leave.

And then France needed somewhere to hold its summit.

In comes the hustler to rescue Manu. The man of the people to roll out the red carpet and tarmac the [very specific] Nairobi roads. The bestest president to ever president is here, at your service, Manu. Just tell me what you need, and I gatchu.

You’ve been rendered into exile from West Africa? Worry not, because I gatchu. Come hivi Nai, nikushow love.

Chapter III: The sahani za wageni of it all.

In many homes in this country – you know this if you’re Kenyan – there are two kinds of crockery. (I like that word. “Crockery.” I don’t know why. I’ve just always liked it.)

There are the everyday plates. Oftentimes they’re plastic, sometimes they’re melamine, sometimes they’re enamel-coated metallic. The plastic ones are often slightly warped, because once upon a time, someone left it too close to an open flame. The melamine ones are often chipped – they fell at some point, sometimes reserved for when the regular anko or antie pops by.

And then there’s the sahani za wageni.

The good plates. Glassware, often. Wrapped in an old newspaper at the back of the top shelf. Brought out when the in-laws arrive from upcountry. When mum’s jumuiya visits. When someone important is coming and the house needs to demonstrate, at the level of crockery, that we are not a family who eats from cheap chipped plates.

The food is the same food, but a little extra Royco and a few extra tomatoes thrown in – a huge deal in this economy. The fancy table mats are even brought out. We prepared for you.

On the 9th of May 2026, the Government Spokesperson’s Office issued a public advisory. Heavy VVIP movement. Key transport corridors. Summit period. Plan accordingly. Mombasa Road. Lang’ata Road. Thika Road. Limuru Road. Kiambu Road – intermittent stoppages. City Hall Way. Parliament Road. Harambee Avenue. Taifa Road – fully closed from midnight on May 11th. Conference vehicles only.

Quite literally, “Mjipange.”

The Nairobi Regional Police Commander added: Those with flights should arrive at JKIA five hours ahead of their scheduled departure time. Five hours. If you had a 7am flight on the 12th of May, you were being asked to leave for the airport at 2am. In the morning. Because Emmanuel Macron was coming.

Sahani za wageni.

The everyday plates – the Nairobians who use Mombasa Road to get to work, the ones with a flight to catch who can’t miss it because they are not VVIPs, the ones with a matatu to board at 6am who discovered the route was closed – the everyday plates went to the back of the cupboard.

The crockery doesn’t choose when it comes out. It is chosen. And the bestest president to ever president, whose instruments of power has been frequently documented brutalising everyday Kenyans, decided that the capital city of this sovereign land shall be bent to fit an image that its citizens have been beaten and killed for demanding.

Sahani za wageni.

There’s a theatre to when visitors come to your house. I don’t know how universal it is amongst us colourful cultures, so I shall speak of the Kenyan context I know of.

First, the thermos that’s accompanied by the universal question: “Utakunywa chai?” It’s more rhetorical than anything else – the thermos is already there, along with the saucer, the cup, and the bowl