English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
The April 25 attacks and Macron's interview 0:00 So hello Dominique, how are you? Hello Yannick, like an old man getting older and older, otherwise I'm fine. So today we're going to talk a bit about Mali, given the recent events that have taken place there. I'd remind you that you're a philosophy teacher and that you lived and worked for nearly 30 years in Sahelian Africa. So it's a place you know particularly well and that you continue to follow, notably through contact with your former students there.
0:33 So recently, Macron, in the last few days, was at the Franco-African summit Africa Forward, on the 11th and 12th of May 2026 in Nairobi. The summit was organized by France in order, I quote, to illustrate the wealth between Africa and France. But Macron was trying to polish France's image in Africa, because we know he's not in good odor, particularly in the Sahel.
1:04 And so I wanted to show you the interview he gave to RFI and France 24 during this Africa Forward summit, so that you can comment a bit on what he says. The summit is in Nairobi. That's right, in Kenya. So I'll let you play the video and you can jump in whenever you want. Thank you very much for giving me the chance to talk about a region I remain attached to. And to give the recent context in Mali, on April 25th, Mali suffered several coordinated terrorist attacks by JNIM, a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, and the Tuareg from the Azawad Liberation Front.
1:48 So the Azawad is a region located in the north of Mali. Taken together, they constitute the most massive attack the country has experienced in 14 years. Their offensive was immediately repelled by the Malian armed forces and the victorious Russian Africa Corps. Although the human toll remains unclear, 23 civilian and military deaths and several hundred assailants neutralized according to official figures, notably because of the size of the region concerned, we do know however that Mali's Defense Minister, Sadio Camara, was assassinated.
2:27 Mali's transitional president, Assimi Goïta, is for now responsible for replacing him. And the country is currently on maximum alert. So I'll let you play the video and you comment whenever you want. I'm hitting play. On April 25th, Bamako was attacked. The Defense Minister was assassinated, Kidal fell. The French army certainly left Mali in 2022, but it stayed there for 10 years, with the sacrifices we know about.
2:59 In hindsight, what would you have done differently to avoid the current situation? First, I think of the Malian people and what they've been going through for so many years. All the blows from terrorist groups, then decisions made by the perpetrators of coups d'état, who chose instead to ally themselves with private militias and then Russian para-public ones, who preferred their own security rather than the fight against terrorism. France came in 2013. It was my predecessor François Hollande who made that decision, at the request, at the request of President Keïta, to prevent the partition of Mali and the advance of terrorist groups coming from the North.
3:42 Our armies stood alongside Mali, but also Niger, Burkina Faso, throughout all those years, until 2020, and even a bit after if we take the 2021 period, with great courage, commitment, on a mandate that was clear, at the request of a sovereign state, endorsed by the regional organization which was ECOWAS. And several dozen of our soldiers fell, and I think of them and their families. We were then, forgive me for saying it this way, repaid with ingratitude and a lot of false information.
Jihadism, the destruction of Libya, and the CFA franc 4:17 And I hold a real grudge against the leaders and all those who made such unacceptable statements. What a great humanist! He had that grieved look before the woman questioned him. That sorrowful look about what's happening in this Africa he's so attached to. Well, that's more... Giscard, we called him "Giscard the African," following the diamonds affair. Come on, let's be serious, because these things are actually serious.
4:52 First of all, these are among the poorest countries in the world. You need to know that. It's not a value judgment. Those are figures from the UN, the World Bank, whatever you like, the IMF. And... Did he raise the questions? The jihadists, as you rightly said, there are two groups that merged. The IES party, these aren't political parties.
5:25 Two armies. Two armed groups that joined together. There's on one hand, I said, those are the classic "Allahu akbar" ones, well Allahu akbar, I have nothing against that, it's the prayer that all Muslims say. So we must always remember that Muslims are the main victims of Islamic fundamentalism financed by the West. What people have completely forgotten is that the first massive use of Islamic fundamentalism by the Americans in particular was...
6:00 in Afghanistan to drive out the Soviets. Let's not be too ungrateful. There you go. And in this case, these jihadist groups developed massively following the destruction of Libya. It's the local version, I should say, national version, better to say, of Al-Qaeda. But of course, thank you for bringing up the Libyan file here. We won't go through the whole history of Libya, but people don't realize how popular Gaddafi was in sub-Saharan Africa.
6:40 Or black Africa, whatever you want to call it. I say sub-Saharan Africa because now it's no longer politically correct to say black Africa. Africans, who aren't idiots, don't say "Euro-Caucasians," they say "whites." And we say "African-Americans." So, let's be serious, I often flew over Libya when I was doing West Africa-Paris flights, for stopovers, because I went through Rome, which was convenient for me to see a friend, etc.
7:13 At the time, you could still do stopovers without changing your ticket. And we were immediately struck by the prosperity compared to the regional average. From Egypt to Morocco, Libya had astonishing gas stations. There were canals 1,300 kilometers long bringing fresh water across the desert. And besides, you should know that Libyan oil, what's called Arabian Light, is one of the best there is.
7:52 It doesn't need refining work as long and complicated as other oils. Plus, you take it by the sea, boat, and it ends up in Italy, and from there, the pipeline all the way to Hamburg. The dream. So, as it happens, the war is topical, because yesterday there were the requested sentences against Sarkozy, who was sentenced to actual prison time, etc., with aggravated sentences for corruption, for the electoral campaign.
8:39 And here we have this country being attacked right at the moment when it had just proposed to the black African countries a substitute currency for the CFA franc. Must be a coincidence. It's terrible. It's always thresholds like that, when you cross those red lines that currencies represent, like when Saudi Arabia started accepting China paying for its oil in yuan, no longer in dollars.
From the OAS to the Tuareg card, from Mali to Katanga 9:21 That means less demand for the dollar, which falls. These are the conflicts that are somewhat underground compared to what stirs up the media. So, in Mali's case, let's start with some historical depth. During the Algerian war, going way back, the supporters of French Algeria, the French far right—I'm not talking about the ordinary pied-noir who always lived there and whose little paradise was taken from him.
9:56 At most, I respect—that's a big word, but I understand. No, I'm really talking about the far right in Paris, especially, which was against de Gaulle, of course. Never forget that de Gaulle, who went through World War II, was never so close to death as during the Petit-Clamart assassination attempt carried out by OAS militants, the Secret Army Organization, and by French Algerians. Well, I'll move quickly. What do we need to know that brings us to Mali?
10:27 It's that already, the supporters of French Algeria did everything to decouple the Tuareg from the rest of Mali. If it were only Mali and the Tuareg, they extend over an area that goes beyond the borders. There are some, of course, in Niger. One of the Tuareg capitals is Agadez, in Niger.
10:59 There are some in Algeria, of course, in Mali. They all speak a common language, Tamazight or Tamashek, which is part of what linguists call the Libyco-Berber languages, which predate the Arab conquest. So the Kabyles in Algeria, the Berbers in Morocco, and the Tuareg in Mali—it's the same language.
11:32 That's interesting to know, with a few small semantic variations. I'll come back to politics. What that kind of far right used to say was, they told the Tuareg, you're surely not going to be ruled tomorrow by your former slaves. Black presidents of Mali. And so they encouraged secession, already, of northern Mali, to come back to what you introduced very well.
12:02 Because all of this, the hotbed, is the north, the border region with Algeria, and until then, it was under cover of fundamentalist, religious movements, banning music, stoning women who listen to Saturday night music. And now we learn that they've allied themselves this time with the Tuareg independence movement, taking into account the historical depth I just mentioned, which is less religiously involved than JNIM.
12:46 I told you about those old OAS members, the French far right, who played the Tuareg card to bring about Mali's secession. Exactly like the deadliest wars we talk about the least, but which are the deadliest in the contemporary world. I'm not even talking about the postwar period, since 1914. It's in the Congo. It's terrifying. It's estimated that between 10, up to 15 million deaths in total. I'm counting the African Great Lakes region, to use a notion that goes beyond the DRC, which includes Burundi, Rwanda with the massacres we know about.
13:29 Westerners, the Belgians and the French in particular, but with American financing, did everything so that Katanga, the south of the DRC, the Shaba as it's called now, would secede, because it's one of the richest places in the world in mineral resources. That's not going to serve to pay the salaries of this immense continent-country that is the former Belgian Congo. It's frightening, such cynicism. And so, there were wars and murders, whatever they were, where a puppet, a stooge, Moïse Tshombe, was installed, who was the Westerners' man, and it ended, as we know, with torture and assassination by a bullet in the back.
14:13 They told him, "You're free, you can..." Patrice Lumumba, who was one of the great Marxist-leaning leaders, was shot down to bring about secession, secession from the south. Back to Mali, secession from the north. But it's an alliance of the carp and the rabbit, that. The secular ones, broadly speaking, the Tuareg, and the JNIM fundamentalists, joining forces.
14:47 Why not? Afterward, if both end up disappointed, if both find that the center doesn't take enough care of the periphery, of the abandoned regions, there are real problems. These are huge countries. Mali is huge. Niger is huge. It's about the same size. Twice the size of France. France is the largest country in Western Europe. I'm not talking about Russia. It's immense, even though more than half, sometimes two-thirds, as in Niger, is occupied by the Sahara, by the desert.
Danielle Mitterrand and the word "junta" 15:19 The real desert, not the Sahel. I mentioned what the far right used to say, pushing for secession by the Tuareg. Twenty years later, a generation later, sorry, Madame Mitterrand, Danielle, who's supposed to be a bit more left-wing than her husband historically was, said, speaking of the Tuareg, when they were in conflict with the government of Niger and Mali. Still, you have to understand that this is a people who have always lived proud and free.
15:54 What does that mean? That Black people are servile? It's really extraordinary. There's now a racism that always favors ethnic groups people like, ones that aren't too "negrified." The Tuareg, the Masai. You notice, what's called in the Bible the "red ones." In the Bible, there are three races. There are the Whites, that is, the Semites. In the Bible, the Jews, the Arabs, the Whites. There are the Blacks, and between the two, there are the Reds.
16:24 That's exactly the Masai, when you look, copper-skinned, there. So you have to take that historical context into account already. Madame Mitterrand said "a proud and free people." It's as if Black-skinned Africans were a bunch of servile, inferior people. I'm not talking about the far right, I'm talking about what's supposed to embody the left.
16:56 You're talking about a left that comes from Vichy. Not her, but her husband. So, there you have the prior context leading up to the recent crisis you're talking about, which began a little over 15 days ago. And once again, there's a threat to the capital. The events have the same context that pushed Hollande to send the French army to prevent them from reaching Bamako.
17:27 So, you might say, well that's good then, except the reason, the justification for the presence of French forces, was to fight against jihadism, against—well, but actually, when they were in Kidal, which has been talked about so much recently, the town, or supposedly, the Russians reportedly said, listen, let us evacuate, we're not part of your conflicts—basically abandoning those who were supposed to be their allies and their Malian protégés.
18:02 That was true, it's completely crazy, we've now seen what happened since. And then, you could sense a sort of, how should I say, a giddiness in the French media—I'm thinking of France, I'm thinking of France 24, state media funded by public taxes, I mean, I'm not even talking about the private channels, let's not even mention the LCIs and other BFMTVs, who sensed that when the rebels were at the gates of Bamako, what a pleasure to take revenge on those bastards who chased us out of our home—our home, francophone Africa, I mean, really—and who never say "the government of Mali," nor even "the regime"—"regime" is already more disqualifying—no, "the junta," "the junta."
18:50 Now that's rich. I'll pick up on that word right away in relation to what was just said. Because since Mali's independence in the 1960s, in the early sixties, with the great Modibo Keïta, who was a great Marxist and who proposed abolishing the colonial borders and proposed to Senegal to form a single country—that would have been magnificent. All those measures were undone by the bribes from Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire, with the agreement of the French.
19:22 Well, anyway, the dream of a federal Africa. Modibo Keïta was overthrown by a military coup. It's generals who seize power, the junta. Then it's colonels who chase out the generals, then it's lieutenants who chase out the colonels, and when it's corporals and warrant officers governing a country, we shouldn't be too surprised. The French have always played that game, and now they talk about "the junta" as if, all of a sudden, they'd become anti-militarists, because as we all know, we're the democrats striving to limit, right, the abuses of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes around the world.
20:07 Especially when they're young people backed by the worst, Russia and China. Totalitarian and authoritarian. There you go, I insist on those words because if we use them, we fall into the trap. It's not "the junta." It's the most popular government I know of. I've known these regions for a very long time now. That's not proof in itself, it's not because I've lived there a long time that I know better—that's not enough. I know plenty of people who said "the negroes," I've dealt with them for 50 years.
Where does the rebels' money come from? 20:38 "I know, the guy has understood nothing." I know some, it's true, 50 years in the same African country, and they don't know a single word of the language. Curious. Me, when I bump into someone at the market in Bamako, I like to apologize and have the woman or man understand why, in Bambara in this case, that I'm apologizing. So, first thing, and now I'm getting to the essential point, these are countries of such poverty—go to the villages north of Bamako, and let's not even talk about beyond Ségou, heading north, then past Gao, Timbuktu, etc.
21:23 There are markets where you can only find onions, onions, sometimes there's not even a chicken to buy, especially during the dry season. And suddenly—now I get to current events—you see columns of guys with armored vehicles, drones; when they attacked the minister they assassinated while he was praying in the mosque, when he was assassinated, that struck people, because they're not fundamentalists, but they're pious Muslims, with their five prayers a day.
21:57 So where does the money come from? How can you afford a 4x4 when there's not even enough to buy a chicken? That's where I get to the heart of the problem. It's not possible that the money doesn't come from outside. So this Macron, with his pitying look, talking about these special ties we have with this Africa I adore—when suddenly now he acts hurt about the ingratitude toward the help we brought, at such a cost.
22:27 And it's true, we did lose quite a few soldiers there. I knew a few of them, actually. I can't suspect that they're the ones financing the... financing the rebellion. So I'm not entirely idealistic either. That is, I'm not mentally handing a blank check of support to these new regimes which, in the streets of Bamako, wave Russian flags and hold up signs reading "Macron get out."
23:10 It seems to me I'm witnessing a second wave of independence. I lived through the first one, I was a pre-teen, 14-15 years old. Why not? But I have some wariness because you never know. Here, it's not the Americans chasing out the French, because, you know, it's well known that the Americans dealt with the FLN, all while being on the side of the pieds-noirs. We were talking earlier together about how the Americans can finance both sides of a conflict.
23:48 So I was on my guard. What dispelled my doubts? That it was truly a national, popular movement... it's when they... You probably followed the back-and-forth of our ambassador to Niger who stayed put, who refused to leave Bamako even though he'd been declared persona non grata. In diplomatic terms, you don't push it. You send a new ambassador who presents credentials that are either accredited or not by the state in which they represent France.
24:18 It's incredible, the whole song and dance about staying there. And thank goodness the regime, as they call it, the Nigerien government gave instructions not to touch a hair on the head of the French. Because that's exactly what they're waiting for, to justify an intervention. This whole maneuver of the ambassador remaining besieged in his embassy, fine, he ends up leaving. This so-called support is ridiculous. Why do I make this detour through our ambassador in Niger?
24:53 It's precisely to come back to the heart of the Malian problem. I raised the question: where does the money come from? Why do these rebels, these jihadists, or the identity-based rebels like the Tuareg — where do they get the money to have such military equipment, which represents several years' salary for a single armored vehicle?
25:34 A 4x4 with a machine gun, for example. And now, on top of that, they had drones, which didn't exist a few years ago. Where does the money come from? I said, maybe it's the French, but maybe it's also the Americans who want to chase us out. My doubt has dissipated — I'll finish on this. The largest surveillance base covering the entire Sahelian territory, gigantic, that is, from Chad, if you know your geography, practically all the way to Mauritania, to the Atlantic — an American base that was in the north of Niger, right in the middle of the desert, which installed itself without the authorization of the Nigerien government at the time.
26:20 That was before what they call the Junta. And it was Washington's eye over the whole region. The watchers know it down to the square centimeter. They knew what was happening in the desert. So there is always this old dream of preventing what, in nuclear technology, is called critical mass. That's when quantities of uranium take on such a geometry that the blast begins.
26:53 The safety mechanism is having separations that you melt at the last moment to make the bomb explode. That's it. Why do I use this metaphor? Because the critical mass that's dangerous for imperialists would be for Black Africa and Maghreb Africa to unify. You can do whatever you want in the desert. Cocaine from South America arrives via Sierra Leone, one of the — to put it politely — informal countries.
27:25 And then you get to Mali's borders, it will spread out towards Morocco and Algeria and afterwards it will be distributed in Europe. There are customs officers. There's one every 20 kilometers in the middle of nothing. To the customs officer, you offer roughly 15 years of his salary to let through whatever you want — machine guns, heroin, cocaine. That's what needs to be seen, the reality on the ground. So this isn't some spontaneous eruption of people.
Trafficking, installed regimes, and Niger's uranium 27:57 And it's true there are real problems. It's true that for a long time, the central governments of Mali neglected the peripheral regions. But those were regimes installed by the French. Those who overthrew Modibo Keïta — I go back to what I was saying earlier — and who put in a succession of... the one who stayed the longest was the dictator Moussa Traoré. A lot of names shared with Malian footballers — Keïta, Traoré, etc.
28:29 And the twelve tribes of Manden. And so, there you have it — I'm restating what Macron means, but I'm forced to spell out everything that isn't said there but that underlies what is being said. Nevertheless, now it's the Malian people who suffer. It's this whole region that suffers. And if you ask me to look back at the past, as early as 2017, they launched the G5 Sahel alliance, and then this alliance where they said there's security, development and politics all at once.
29:03 It's about not having actually been harder, in some way more demanding, on that front, and not having asked the leaders with even more force to move faster in bringing in administration, development projects and opportunities for emancipation everywhere territory was retaken from the terrorists. Because, in the end, it came to look like a security guarantee that was simply being provided to them. And so I think we should have had that demanding dialogue earlier. And perhaps, in that case, rethought our military presence earlier.
29:34 Nevertheless, what I see is that we made a complete transformation over these last four years, and it's paying off. That is to say, we completely — before moving on, let me comment on this very interesting passage. Because he's basically saying, we didn't do enough. We were too diplomatic, we spared people's sensitivities, we should have told them, come on, you're at home, we're going to make short work of these jihadists, but you, you need to play the game, go build schools there, in short, develop.
30:09 It would be quite the first time one of these countries actually develops. Because I've known them since independence, that's a long time back, the early 1960s. That's now more than half a century. I'll take the example of Niger deliberately. You'll see the connection with Mali. You just replace what I'm about to say — uranium — with gold, and you're back to Mali. But in Niger, because there it's blatant. It's one of the largest uranium deposits in the world, it's known now, at Arlit, way up north, right in the middle of the desert.
30:44 This uranium that has been exploited by French companies for ages — it's with... the Junta, to speak as they do, that just took that away from the French, which they will not forgive them for. But anyway, the French exploit uranium with which we produce 60% of our electricity in France. Which is a unique proportion in the world.
31:14 Meanwhile, in Niger, 87% of citizens have no electricity at home. It's the candlelight regime. Go figure. And he tells us, you should have developed — but for heaven's sake, when you hold all the power, you didn't do it. Because it was — what was it called — the company that ran the uranium, Areva, which ran Niger.
31:44 Just as in the immense former Zaire, Belgian Congo and currently the Democratic Republic of Congo, it was the great Belgian company, the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which ran the country. Same thing. So there you go, this is to denounce the hypocrisy of the statement. Let's wait for what comes next. We were rethinking the security and peace relationship with the African continent.
African names for the bases: Mobutu's "authenticity" 32:16 We said everywhere what was the legacy of the past, we're putting it back on the table, the same approach as with the currency. That is to say, ultimately, it's not because we've been there forever with a military base, with French soldiers, that it has to keep existing. So you tell us what you need. It's a partnership, it's you who thinks it through. These are your security requests, which we respond to. And so we've completely rethought things, we've closed bases, we've scaled down many others. All the bases where we are, we're there jointly. We've renamed them, often with African names.
32:47 We are together with African forces from each country and French forces. And then, we've also invented new partnerships with countries we weren't in before, which are partnerships for equipping, training, and accompanying. I was just responding with African names. The shame of Africa for a long time was the leader of the former Belgian Congo. Mobutu Sese Seko, if we remember. A guy who was pulled from the ranks, a foot soldier pulled from the ranks to gun down Lumumba and then become the super general president of... Mali.
33:27 He's the first one who forced his fellow citizens to bear certain first names, who invented the concept of authenticity. Authenticity. There you go. So instead of being called Jean-Michel, you'd be called Sese Seko. That kind of thing doesn't cost much. It's like when I say Madame la ministre and Madame le ministre, I find that more coherent. I'm not against it in itself. Except that this kind of reform doesn't cost the employers' federation a single cent.
33:58 There you go. I'll pick up on "we gave African names." How generous of you, Macron. And I think it's much healthier, and it's also what allows the perception, particularly among the youth, to change. Because these big bases that existed were somewhat perceived — and that's actually what was used by some people, saying the French are there to recolonize you, look, they have thousands of soldiers there — or by others, saying they support the leaders in place, they have an old-fashioned agenda. Done with that. Now we've, I'd say, normalized things, and likewise, it's a fair, responsible partnership, truly on equal footing.
34:38 Enlightening. Since he's talking about youth, let me take the opportunity to say that those most worked up against France now are the young people in the Sahel. As you were kind enough — I mentioned it earlier — the former students of what was called the CFPM in Niger, the center for musical training and promotion, funded by Brussels in the country ranked as the poorest in the world, even though I'm the first to say there are about ten countries that could dispute that unfortunate pompom.
35:13 It's especially among the young that you find the "Macron get out" sentiment, and that they demand a change of alliances for the country. They're the ones most worked up. And he knows it, he's better informed than you or I about what's happening there. There are advisers there permanently, not to mention men from the country itself who played an important role in the attack on Bamako. Regarding Bamako, recently, we know they killed the minister who was a major figure, a national hero.
35:48 The minister who held the defense portfolio, which is now held by Assimi Goïta. Thanks. There you go. There's General Tiani in Niger. There's of course Ibrahim Traoré in Burkina Faso, who is the most popular figure among Sahel youth. Who is very young. Pardon? Who is very young. Burkina Faso has always been a bit apart in all this, for a reason that's never discussed and that's very interesting politically.
36:19 It's the country with the greatest and strongest trade union tradition among these countries, where generally the unions, with the military dictatorships we put in place — all these juntas that we did not call juntas at the time. Ibrahim Traoré comes from this country, which is after all the country of Thomas Sankara. I nearly published his memoirs when I was working for Hachette. It would have truly been one of the greatest satisfactions of my life, but he was assassinated just as I was about to bring back to France what's called the BAT, the final proof for printing.
Macron in Kenya and progressive francophonie 36:59 There you go. I'm ready. Answer if you have any questions bothering you. No, but actually what also seemed interesting to me is that Macron gave this interview live from the Africa Forward summit that just took place, that just took place in Kenya, and one gets the impression that as Macron's France is increasingly rejected in the Sahel and francophone Africa in general, he's trying — it's quite symptomatic that he does this in Kenya, an English-speaking country — he's trying to come back into Africa through the back window, if I may say so, with a more tolerant discourse, saying we're going to remove bases, because it's older than we think, what you're saying.
37:43 And so here his idea is somewhat to say we're making new economic partnerships, it's as if he's trying to compete with China in wooing Africa. I understand you, but it's not new — when I was in Niger this goes back to 2007-2008, what am I saying, nonsense, 1997-1998, sorry, 2007, that's Sarkozy's election — when I was there already, people were saying, well, we're fed up with the private hunting ground, we as France need to work a bit on the English-speaking countries, you see what you just said, it's not new, that's 30 years old, of course. And then there's wealth, there's one of the largest copper deposits in the world in Zambia, there's the gigantic exception of Nigeria, because these are underpopulated countries, Niger, Mali, relative to their territory — there's the population of the Île-de-France, barely a bit more than the Île-de-France for twice the surface area of France, for example — and then you've got Nigeria where there are more than 200 million inhabitants with a ton of oil per inhabitant. You can't leave that
38:55 to chance, there you go. So we have to take interest in those markets, especially since England has now somewhat withdrawn from the game, even if it kept a few outposts. Generally speaking, the English didn't administer the countries much, they relied on local chieftaincies, traditional chiefs, often slave-owning ones, by the way — whereas you find the Jacobin tradition in the fact that in French-speaking African countries you have prefecture, sub-prefecture, there you go, in Mali there are governors in the regions, there you go. So you're quite right to say he's trying, but honestly, no one is fooled, I mean he's completely discredited in Africa, from South Africa to Algeria, I mean he's completely discredited really. Well, we'll see over the coming months how France tries to reestablish itself there. I didn't say that France
40:05 is discredited — me, I remain loyal, I mean there's an exceptional card to play, a card where primary school played a big role, there are Africans who recite to you by heart, with a tear in their eye, poems by Victor Hugo or prose passages from Les Misérables, I mean France isn't associated with the same values as, let's say, a great English writer, Kipling, you see, who is a major colonialist, a supporter of the 1914 war, you see, it's not the same story. That's important to see too, there's a progressive Francophonie that's constantly kept under the bushel, that's rarely talked about, people talk more about the antics of the dictators we installed instead of these progressive leaders whom we often helped liquidate, moreover, at the time of the coups there, in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 in the Sahel, one of the military leaders who came to power had precisely denounced these anti-French leaders of France, that was quite symptomatic of that, of course it's interesting to follow that. I'll come back to the Algerian
41:15 file — when the Americans were dealing both with the FLN against the French, the FLN, and with the OAS as well, so we see that they attack French imperialism but not so much the values of liberty, equality and fraternity that symbolize France. There's still this original sin, which is the French Revolution, which can be an endless source of trouble for our companies, for the free market. There you go, it's as simple as that. Thank you very much, Dominique, thank you for this opportunity to talk about something that's close to my heart, and not at all for exotic reasons — Africa doesn't miss me, it's Africans I miss. Africa is in my heart, but it's Africans, because in the worst material conditions imaginable, they often have a cheerfulness, a smile, whereas we, the most privileged here, are haunted by insecurity when we've never been so safe in history. There you go, thank you very much, see you soon, and I hope we can have you back on our channel very soon, inch'Allah, bye.
