Speech of Emmanuel Macron during the Ambassadors’ week: for an Africa - Mediterranean - Europe integrated axis
Stéphanie Baz
During the speech he gave in front of all the ambassadors and the members of government gathered at the Elysée on Tuesday 29 August 2017, the President of the French Republic, Mister Emmanuel Macron, was very clear: the creation of an integrated axis between Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe will structure the French diplomatic strategy over the next few years.
From this speech, that you can find integrally here, we specifically retain the following extracts:
“Africa is not only the continent of migrations and crises, it is the continent of the future, this is why we can’t leave it alone in the face of its demographic, climatic and political challenges. Our companies, students, researchers and artists must take an interest in Africa. I will soon go to Ouagadougou to carry this message. The strategy I want to implement consists in creating an integrated axis between Africa, the Mediterranean and Europe, through security, development, diplomacy, economic bonds and innovation.” »
“In this axis, North African countries are obviously our privileged partners, as I tried to show during my visit in Morocco and the regular exchanges I had with Algeria and Tunisia. Together, we must tie up the European and African continents, through the Mediterranean. To do so, North Africa will remain a priority for France, in all our economic, political and cultural cooperation fields.”
“The necessity routes, that so many African people take, made of the African desert and the Mediterranean the cemeteries of millions of Africans, who are left to poverty and in the hands of the trafficker networks I talked about earlier. These necessity routes must become freedom paths that unite Europe, the Mediterranean and Africa.”
“For the future of the world mostly lies in Africa. France cannot be this post-colonial country that hesitates between week political pastoral duty and unhealthy repentance. African countries will be our great partners. We must keep learning from them just like they can learn from us. In order to initiate this exchange, in the coming weeks I will implement a Presidential Council for Africa, an unprecedented structure that focuses on the expectations of our youths.”
IPEMED has been defending this Africa - Mediterranean - Europe integration (the AME region) for many years, especially by advocating the creation of a foundation that will boost this integration through a network of several European and African existing laboratories.
IPEMED understood, and scientifically demonstrated, the emergence of this great Africa - Mediterranean - Europe North/South region. However, it is Emmanuel Macron’s job to transform this scientific idea into a political project.
The idea of North/South integration is fully developed, but it now requires some courage and ambition to implement it.