À quoi sert la Francophonie ? - Réponse à quelques jours du sommet de Villers-Cotterêts • RFI

What is the IEF for? Let's be honest, francophonie is not in an Olympic form. 15 years after Rwanda, here is Algeria, which replaces French with English at the university. In the Sahel, the bridges are cut between, on the one hand, the IEF, the International Organization of Francophonie, on the other hand, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Certainly, as the linguist Lionel Menet says, there has never been so many francophones in the world, more than 300 million, of which the majority in Africa, but French has never been so threatened. Why? First of all, because English is everywhere, in science, technology, future sectors such as digital, but also because francophonie is still seen by many as a post-colonial instrument of France. And from this point of view, the opening, this October 4th, of the 19th summit of francophonie at the Château de Villers-Cotterêts, a high point in the history of France, is of course an argument for the speakers of this thesis. So it's true, the IEF, the International Organization of Francophonie, is used in particular to make France shine in the world. Emmanuel Macron totally assumes it. Francophonie is a soft power to the French, as the Commonwealth is a soft power to the British, and as Hollywood is a soft power to the American. It's also true that, for Emmanuel Macron, this 19th summit falls short. Since 2017, there has been no more Africa-France summit. By organising in Montpellier a rather baroque summit, where, you remember, no head of state was invited, the French president wanted to seduce African public opinion. But the result is not convincing, and the other greats of this world, the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, have continued to organise summits with African heads of state. For Emmanuel Macron, this 19th IEF summit sounds like a catch-up speech that allows him to remain politically present on the African continent, while waiting for the resumption of traditional Africa-France summits. It will be in two years in Nairobi. But francophonie is not only at the service of France, far from it. And that's the whole point of this Villers-Cotterêts summit. Francophonie is a reduced model of the UN, where countries at war can seek support and solidarity. This is the case of Lebanon, which lives under bombs. This is the case of Armenia, which does not comfort itself for having lost its province of Karabakh a year ago. This is the case of Haiti, where the population of the capital is delivered to the mafia gangs. And this is of course the case of Congo, whose eastern provinces are devastated by a rebellion supported by Rwanda. The Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi believes that the Secretary-General of the IEF, Louise Mushikiwabo, who is herself Rwandan, is not neutral in this conflict. This is why he is impatiently waiting for the end of the second mandate of the Secretary-General, in two years, in the hope that her successor will be more Congo-like. This is one of the issues of this 19th summit. And then francophonie is something else. It is often said that in the year 2000, apart from the fireworks, nothing important happened. Well, on November 3, 2000, in Bamako, at a summit organized by the Malian president of the time, Alfaoumar Konaré, all the member states of the IEF signed a declaration rejecting the seizure of power by force and authorizing the IEF to react vigorously to any interruption of this nature and to serious violations of human rights. In recent years, it is in the logic of this declaration that the IEF suspended Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Today, the IEF reintegrates Guinea, because the regime of General Doumbouya promises a return to the constitutional order by next year. But the IEF joins Guinea to continue its efforts on the issue of rights and freedoms, a clear allusion to these two figures of civil society, Foni Kemenge and Mamadou Biloba, who were arrested on July 9 and whose news we have had since. Their relatives are very worried. If 24 years after the declaration of Bamako, francophonie can serve to defend democracy and human rights, it certainly has a bright future ahead of it.