CIVIL SOCIETY STATEMENT ON THE AFRICA – FRANCE ‘FORWARD’ SUMMIT
We, the civil society organizations, social movements and peoples’ organisations take note of the Africa-France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth Summit happening in Nairobi Kenya on May 11-12, 2026 and its call to accelerate ‘investment’, ‘innovation’, and ‘green growth’ as the pathway to Africa’s future. The Summit is being presented as a partnership, yet appears to be a coordinated effort to reassert French influence over Africa’s development trajectory. By centering private investments and corporate driven “innovation”, the Summit reinforces the dominance of institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund whose policies have systematically constrained Africa’s policy space.
We therefore reject this framing with urgency and clarity as this is an extension of the same neoliberal economic model that has kept African countries structurally dependent, unequal, and vulnerable to global crisis. Civil society organisations and peoples movements are raising concerns on the misleading narrative presented by governments regarding the Africa-France Summit.
Green Capitalism in the name of Climate Action
France and its allies are actively promoting an agenda of “green partnerships” and “sustainable investment frameworks,” positioning African countries as destinations for climate capital flows and private-led transitions. While touted as climate action, these approaches increasingly promote market-based mechanisms, including carbon markets, and public-private partnerships that expand the role of private capital in the provision of public services. This is problematic because it often results in land grabbing and dispossession and the commodification of ecosystems. Furthermore, this system allows developed countries to continue emitting while shifting mitigation responsibility onto African countries, continuing a cycle of ecological degradation and climate injustice.
This agenda is set to be consolidated through the summit, which serves as a strategic hub for advancing green extractivism in climate discourse. At a time when African peoples are facing worsening crises such as rising debt burdens, intensifying climate crises, shrinking civic space and precarious labour conditions, these elite-driven processes are reinforcing the very systems that produce injustice.
Rebranding economic domination over African countries through IFI reform
The Africa–France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth present itself as a platform to advance reform of international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This raises concerns as this reform agenda does not challenge structural inequalities embedded within these IFIs. The Summit’s framing of IFI reform reflects a technocratic approach centered on expanding lending capacity, leveraging private capital through blended finance and adjusting risk frameworks to attract investment. While these reform proposals may appear progressive, they do not address the imbalance in voting power that marginalizes African countries within IFIs. Furthermore, they continue to deepen debt dependency instead of resolving Africa’s debt crisis, emphasizing new lending and restructuring often tied to policy conditionalities that entail austerity measures and budget cuts on public services.
France positioning itself to advance the so-called reform agenda reflects their neocolonial interests given that France is a major shareholder in both the IMF and World Bank, and holds significant voting powers, while at the same time occupying a permanent seat on the IMF Executive Board. Alongside other European powers, France plays a decisive role in shaping lending policies, conditionalities, and institutional priorities that directly affect African economies. What the Summit is presenting as IFI reform is, in reality, a rebranding of the same system, that maintains asymmetric power relations and deepens Africa’s dependence.
Corporate-led innovation cannot lead to real transformation for the African people
The Africa–France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth places “innovation” at the centre of its vision for the continent’s future. However, the version of innovation being promoted is market-driven, one that prioritizes technology, finance, and private sector solutions over the lived realities, indigenous knowledge, and practices of African people.
By elevating investor-led models, the Summit sidelines long-standing African systems of knowledge and practice. Across the continent, communities have developed sustainable actions, initiatives and local resource management practices. These practices have been proven to solve local problems, are context specific and are socially acceptable but they are rarely recognized as “innovation”. Further, the innovation agenda often treats food insecurity, energy access, climate vulnerability as technical problems requiring technical solutions which obscures structural challenges such as land inequality, trade injustice, corporate control and historical exploitation, among others.
An illegitimate process claiming to shape Africa’s future
The Africa-France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth centres governments, investors and corporations and privileges high-level dialogues between governments, International Financial Institutions and multinational corporations who have a reputation of entrenching Africa’s exploitation, inequality and dependency. At the same time, this process has been marked by a worrying democratic deficit despite its claims of shaping Africa’s future.
Civil society organizations, grassroots movements, trade unions, and community representatives have been systematically excluded from the design, agenda-setting, and decision-making processes of the Summit. This exclusionary process therefore lacks democratic legitimacy, accountability and meaningful grounding on lived realities of the African people and therefore lacks moral and political authority to define Africa’s development trajectory.
Our calls:
We assert that Africa’s climate responses must be fulfilled through the delivery of public climate finance (not loans or speculative markets) from Global North countries to support community-driven adaptation and resilience. We reject green extractivism dressed as climate action.
We push for a fundamentally transformed global financial architecture that is rooted in justice, sovereignty, and democratic power. We reject purported reforms that only entrench injustice.
We demand cancellation of all odious and illegitimate debt owed by African countries without austerity and predatory conditions. Over and above we push for reparative financing in forms of grants and not loans.
We call for recognition and support for community-led and locally rooted innovations already being built by the African people. We reject an innovation agenda that privileges investors over communities, elevating technology over justice and treating Africa as a testing ground for external perceived solutions. We demand public disclosure of all agendas, negotiations, and agreements during the Summit. No agreements affecting communities should proceed without free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC).
We challenge the legitimacy of any “forward agenda” that is not grounded in grassroots participation, transparency in decision-making and accountability to African people, not investors from the global North. We refuse to legitimize narratives that mask exploitation as progress.
As civil society organisations and peoples’ movements, we assert that Africa’s future must be shaped by its people through democratic control of resources, justice-centered policies, and systems that prioritize people and planet over profit. We are committed to expose false narratives, resist corporate-driven policies that entrench exploitation and extractivism, and advance people-led, justice-centered alternatives.
Sign the statement today: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1em_0JAQ-K8S4kPaFVgSWdnIf6_OAVaJjqxfcETb4Y_U/edit
