The official programme of the first Africa–France summit ever held in an English-speaking country, on 11–12 May 2026, did not include military issues. Yet it is easy to imagine that security matters were not entirely absent from informal discussions between certain heads of state. Moreover, the decision to hold the summit in a country such as Kenya was no coincidence, coming at a time when Nairobi and Paris have significantly deepened their military and security cooperation. This development has been presented as something new, although in reality it is not. France’s military presence beyond its historic sphere of influence—the famous “pré carré”—has a long history.
To begin with, it is worth recalling that French military cooperation serves a variety of objectives, prioritised differently depending on the partner country: training military personnel at various levels of the hierarchy; providing assistance ranging from intelligence sharing to operational support in combat; promoting the French defence industry and, at times, other economic interests; or giving practical expression to strategic alliances decided by political authorities. Paris openly presents it as one of its main instruments of influence in Africa.
Arms sales and massacres
Since President Emmanuel Macron stopped there before the summit, let us begin with Egypt. Military cooperation between the two countries is longstanding, but its strengthening under the dictatorship of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is a direct consequence of major French arms contracts signed in recent years: Gowind corvettes, multi-mission frigates, Dassault’s first export contract for Rafale fighter jets in 2015, as well as armoured vehicles—even though some of those vehicles had already been used during the massacre that accompanied the military’s seizure of power in July 2013, when nearly 1,000 people were killed.
The French embassy in Egypt is quite explicit on its webpage devoted to bilateral cooperation: “Initiated following the signing of the major arms contracts of 2015, the acceleration of Franco-Egyptian military cooperation took concrete form in 2017 with the creation of a High Military Committee.” Since then, “the defence relationship has become dense and military cooperation between the two countries has diversified”, resulting in “close and frequent relations between senior political and military authorities and, since 2023, the establishment of a bilateral strategic dialogue (DGRIS).”
Documents revealed in November 2021 showed that the French military hierarchy deliberately took advantage of the coup to promote French equipment and encourage political authorities to turn a blind eye to the new regime’s ruthless repression. A few weeks later, Disclose also revealed the extent of France’s involvement in Operation Sirli, a secret mission “launched in 2015 by the French army to provide aerial intelligence to the dictatorship of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Under the pretext of counter-terrorism, this intelligence was used to conduct a campaign of systematic bombings against civilians suspected of smuggling in the Western Desert along the Libyan border.” This criminal cooperation continued with the approval of Presidents François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron despite warnings from certain French officers. Franco-Egyptian rapprochement also benefited from a convergence of interests in the Libyan civil war, with both countries, alongside the United Arab Emirates, supporting Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s attempt to seize power.
Mixed results
Under Emmanuel Macron, efforts to promote French military equipment have not diminished and help explain attempts to strengthen ties with Angola. In 2018, the two countries signed a defence cooperation agreement. Already a customer of Airbus helicopters, Angola hinted that it might also purchase French warships. Yet cooperation struggled to gain momentum, to the point where there was even talk for a time of closing the defence mission attached to the French embassy in Luanda, before it was simply downsized. Among the programmes implemented were French-language training courses for members of the National Police and the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), intended to prepare participants for peacekeeping operations or exercises conducted in French. Such limited arrangements exist in many other non-Francophone countries.
France has had little more success in Ethiopia, where relations appeared promising after Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 and was controversially awarded the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Emmanuel Macron’s March 2019 tour of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya provided an opportunity to strengthen security and economic cooperation and to sign a defence partnership agreement, accompanied by a substantial package of development aid. The objectives included rebuilding an Ethiopian navy and developing the country’s air force.
However, by the time the agreement was ratified by the Ethiopian parliament in June 2021, the war in Tigray was raging and war crimes committed by Ethiopian forces had already been documented. At the time, Mediapart had “questioned, as early as January 2021, the nature of French defence cooperation with Ethiopia” and its future. The Ministry of the Armed Forces responded “only five months later, on 18 May, after eight written reminders”, the investigative outlet reported, falsely claiming that it had supplied no weapons to Addis Ababa.
Given the situation and the numerous atrocities committed by the Ethiopian army, France ultimately chose to suspend the military agreement in August 2021. It does not appear to have been reactivated to this day, despite Macron’s return visit in December 2024 and another stop in the country on 13 May 2026 after the Nairobi summit. One possible reason is the geopolitics of the Horn of Africa and the contentious issue of Ethiopia’s access to the sea, with France having other alliances to preserve in the region, notably with Egypt and Djibouti.
The Indian Ocean in focus
Further south, by contrast, economic and military ties between France and Kenya have continued to expand. President Uhuru Kenyatta had already hosted the “One Planet Summit”, dear to Macron, in March 2019. In 2023, the two countries signed a maritime cooperation agreement. As Africa Intelligence noted in May 2024, “since 2004 Paris has trained Kenyan officers at the Joint Defence College (CID) in Paris.”
At the end of 2025, a defence cooperation agreement was finally concluded, focused primarily on maritime cooperation and intelligence sharing. Peacekeeping training for participation in United Nations and African Union missions continues, as it does with other regional forces. It is provided by personnel from the French Forces in Djibouti, France’s last major military base on the continent. Joint maritime exercises are also planned with the Armed Forces of the Southern Indian Ocean Zone (FAZSOI), based in Réunion and Mayotte, which also conduct exercises with South Africa.
It is worth noting that the cooperation agreement was substantially amended by Kenyan parliamentarians. French lawmakers enjoy no such privilege—and, with a few rare exceptions, do not even demand it. Kenyan public opinion has been deeply affected by unpunished abuses committed by British soldiers stationed in the country.
For Kenya, which ratified the defence agreement with France alongside four others—with the Czech Republic, China, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe—the objective is above all to diversify its partnerships at a time when British troops have a poor reputation and relations with the United States are seen as unpredictable. It may also be a way, as in Djibouti, to leverage a strategically important maritime position coveted by foreign military powers. Italy and Germany are likewise pursuing similar agreements.
The profitable business of the “war on terror”
Several years earlier, in 2010, France had already discreetly cooperated with Kenya to support its operations against Al-Shabaab in Somalia. The “war on terror” has in fact been a major driver of French rapprochement with certain countries during two distinct periods.
The first phase occurred under François Hollande. As Operation Serval in Mali evolved into Operation Barkhane in 2014, covering Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania and Chad, signs of strategic overstretch were already apparent. Hollande nevertheless sought to expand the geographical scope of French military operations and offered French assistance to Nigeria as early as 2015. At the beginning of 2016, he travelled to Abuja and, according to Le Monde, “positioned himself as the military patron of the fight against Boko Haram”. The jihadist group also threatened Niger and Chad, where French troops were deployed, as well as Cameroon, another country within France’s traditional sphere of influence. France provided Nigeria with aerial and satellite intelligence as well as training conducted by the Military Intelligence Directorate (DRM).
Later that April, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian travelled to Nigeria to sign a letter of intent paving the way for a future military cooperation agreement, which was also expected to include efforts to combat maritime insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea, an important oil-producing region. “France has considerable influence over all the Francophone countries in the region,” the Nigerian defence minister remarked in explaining the agreement. The initiative was also intended to address operational difficulties within the Multinational Joint Task Force, which brings together neighbouring states to fight Boko Haram and which France hoped to strengthen.
Naturally, arms sales were also part of the equation. “We are going to help them identify their needs and acquisition procedures,” a French source told AFP. “Nigerian forces have often struggled to procure equipment, notably because of their poor human-rights record and corruption problems,” observed defence journalist Laurent Lagneau on Opex360.com. France, which maintains a permanent maritime operation in the Gulf of Guinea under Operation Corymbe, later conducted several joint exercises with Nigeria and made the country its second-largest arms customer in the region after Senegal. Nevertheless, the defence partnership agreement never materialised.
Reconfiguring beyond the “pré carré”
The second phase began when France was forced to withdraw its troops from several sub-Saharan countries: Mali in 2022, Burkina Faso and Niger in 2023, and Senegal and Chad in 2025. Paris then sought to “reconfigure” its African military posture and place greater emphasis on military cooperation in order to compensate for the reduction of forces stationed on bases or deployed in overseas operations. It now offers its services to a broader range of countries threatened by jihadist insurgencies.
With Ghana, cooperation has remained limited to peacekeeping training and French-language instruction. With Nigeria, however, cooperation has been revived. Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and his French counterpart drew closer following the coups in the Sahel, both supporting ECOWAS plans for military intervention after the overthrow of Mohamed Bazoum in Niger in 2023. During an attempted coup in Benin in December 2025, France intervened militarily in coordination with Nigeria, whose forces bombarded the mutineers’ camp using French intelligence.
The Nigerian president, evidently concerned about destabilisation in an already deteriorating security environment, has repeatedly appealed for assistance. In January 2026, French General Pascal Ianni, head of the Command for Africa (CPA), was dispatched to Abuja, followed in April by Macron’s chief military adviser. Cooperation against Boko Haram in northern Nigeria remains largely coordinated with Britain and the United States and continues to be overshadowed by horrific war crimes committed by Nigerian forces. In the west, however, French special forces are conducting “coordinated operations along the border between Nigeria and Benin with Nigerian and Beninese forces. These operations specifically target leaders of Ansaru, a group affiliated with AQIM [Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb],” according to Africa Intelligence. Nigeria has also granted France overflight rights, enabling it to provide aerial intelligence.
A limited expansion
Although French military cooperation is expanding in non-Francophone countries, it still struggles to carve out a significant place alongside long-established military partnerships with other former colonial powers, as well as with the United States, Russia, China and, increasingly, Turkey. For now, this limited cooperation does not allow France to wield the same degree of influence, create the same forms of dependency, or interfere in conflicts and domestic political crises as it once did—or in some cases still does—in certain Francophone countries.
The difference is also visible in the distribution of military advisers across the continent. A handful are seconded to military academies in non-Francophone countries, but among the seventeen National Schools with Regional Vocational Purpose (ENVRs) overseen by the Directorate for Security and Defence Cooperation (DCSD) and established by France across Africa since the 1990s, not a single one is located outside the Francophone sphere.
To be sure, missile manufacturer MBDA and drone specialist Delair, supported by the semi-public French group Défense Conseil International (DCI), the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) and the Directorate General for International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS), are jointly promoting the creation of a drone academy in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. According to Africa Intelligence, it would serve “both the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) and police and law-enforcement agencies from Botswana as well as neighbouring countries such as South Africa, Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Zambia.” Yet for the time being, military cooperation remains one of the distinctive features of France’s traditional “pré carré”.
