A summit that breaks with tradition
Africa Forward does not resemble previous Africa-France summits. For the first time, the meeting was held in a non-French-speaking country, Kenya, and was co-organized with its president, William Ruto. On 11 and 12 May 2026, between the Kenyatta International Convention Centre and the University of Nairobi, the event was expected to bring together more than 4 000 delegates according to The Africa Report, including around thirty heads of state and government; the French Treasury's directorate general mentions more than 7 000 participants in total, including entrepreneurs, civil society and youth.
The format was intended to be a partnership between equals, focused on the economy and youth rather than on aid. It is also a delicate moment for Paris: according to Reuters, the summit took place against a backdrop of signs of declining French influence in several of its former colonies.
The investment bet
Emmanuel Macron hammered home a message of optimism. During the "Future Makers" session at the University of Nairobi on 11 May, he stated that "Africa is succeeding", that it is "the youngest continent in the world" and that it "needs investments to be more sovereign". The phrase sums up the strategy: replacing the logic of aid with that of investment.
The results announced by the Élysée are substantial: 23 billion euros in investments, including 14 billion from French actors, public and private, and 9 billion from African investors. According to the Élysée, digital and AI account for 3,76 billion, behind the energy transition (4,3 billion). Several concrete commitments relate to digital:
- Orange will open 50 new Orange Digital Centers, bringing its network to 100 centers in Africa and the Middle East, and aims to train more than 3 million young people by 2030;
- a network of "Africa Forward AI Clusters" has been launched with Inria and the nine French AI Clusters; letters of intent have been signed with Benin, Ghana, Morocco, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa, and a cooperation agreement has been concluded with the University of Yaoundé.
The third way as doctrine
The doctrinal framework is found in a press release from the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI), published on 13 May as part of France 2030:
"Three months after the AI summit in India, the General Secretariat for Investment reaffirms, within the framework of the France 2030 plan, its determination to build a third bloc for artificial intelligence." SGPI press release, 13 May 2026.
Faced with the Sino-American duopoly, France proposes to federate a hub bringing together Europe, Africa and countries attached to their autonomy. Concretely, it is extending in Africa the "AI Convergence Challenges" of France 2030 with the French Development Agency. Among them is a hackathon organized with the Data Labelling Association of Kenya and Yale University, under the aegis of sociologist Antonio Casilli (Institut Polytechnique de Paris), to create the first global mapping of workers involved in the production of the most widely used models. The third phase of the "AI Pioneers" program is also being launched in partnership with the Current AI foundation.
The flip side: the shadow work
The mention of annotation work is not insignificant. A significant portion of data labeling, moderation and cleaning of the corpora that feed large models is outsourced, particularly in Kenya, for wages far removed from the value created by the companies that commercialize these models. The SGPI itself assigns the hackathon the objective of "correcting the asymmetry of the AI model production chain where data and value are captured by a handful of actors."
Entrusting this task to Antonio Casilli, a recognized specialist in "digital labor," is a signal. But mapping the shadow workers is one thing; transforming the economic relationships that keep them in precariousness is another. The risk is that the third way remains a geopolitical posture.
Sovereignty, the recurring word
William Ruto placed sovereignty at the heart of his speech on 12 May, uttering the word eight times according to the AP agency. New partnerships, he said, must not be based "on dependence but on sovereign equality, not on aid or charity but on mutually beneficial investment." Emmanuel Macron framed the challenge in terms that resonate with European debates:
"What is our common challenge, Europe and Africa? It is not to depend." Emmanuel Macron, University of Nairobi, 11 May 2026 (Élysée).
The president also tried to defuse the historic distrust: "The paradox is that Europeans are not the predators of this century," he said, accusing China of being "in a predatory logic" on critical minerals. The sentence shows the scale of the rehabilitation work that Paris must undertake.
The UN seal of approval
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres opened the summit on 12 May. "Africa is not waiting. Africa is moving forward. Africa is leading," he said, before recalling that African countries are driving the debate on reforming a global financial architecture "designed in 1945 for a world that no longer exists." An observation that places the third way of AI within a broader movement challenging the established economic order.
An ambition tested by facts
Then comes the reality check. The 23 billion euros mix firm commitments, intentions and ongoing projects. A written question published on 9 June in the National Assembly asked the government for details of public commitments, noting that neither the Élysée statement nor the summit page specified them. And competition is fierce: in 2025, the Kenyan government withdrew a 1,5 billion dollar highway project from a consortium led by Vinci to entrust it to Chinese companies, Reuters reports.
The decisive test will be on data and infrastructure. The final Nairobi declaration insists on investments needed at "all levels of the digital and AI stack": connectivity, regional data centers, computing, energy. If Europe helps Africa host and process its own data, train its engineers and foster local players, the third way will have substance. If it merely deploys solutions designed elsewhere, it will be just a new version of an old dependency.
What to remember
Africa Forward will remain a symbolic breakthrough summit: first Franco-African summit in a non-Francophone country, an explicit discourse on shared sovereignty, ambition for a third way of AI. But the symbol does not make the substance. As long as annotation work remains underpaid and infrastructure and capital remain largely external to the continent, this third way will remain a horizon rather than a reality.
Sources
- Élysée, "Africa Forward Summit in Kenya" and first day (Nairobi speech)
- SGPI, "The General Secretariat for Investment supports the emergence of a 3th way for AI", 13 May 2026
- Directorate General of the Treasury, summit review, 18 May 2026
- Iddri, sectoral breakdown of the 23 billion euros according to the Élysée
- The Africa Report, 11 May 2026
- Jeune Afrique, 11 May 2026
- BFM Business (AFP), 11 May 2026
- Outre-mer La 1ère (France Télévisions), 11 May 2026
- Africanews (AP), 12 May 2026
- UN, speech by António Guterres (French version), 12 May 2026
- Orange, press release of 12 May 2026
- Reuters, 11 May 2026
- National Assembly, written question no. 15259, 9 June 2026
- Élysée, Nairobi final declaration, 12 May 2026
