Reading the International Situation Surrounding the Franco-Africa Forward Summit 2026 in Nairobi

The Franco-Africa Forward Summit took place in Nairobi on May 11-12. Thirty African countries were represented in the Summit. President Ruto of Kenya was the host. This article seeks to confirm that there is in Kenya an organized national social force capable of defending the sovereignty of Kenya and Africa.

Mass Action Against the Summit

Kenyan social forces and intellectuals read the international situation and took to the streets. Led by the Communist Party (Marxist) of Kenya, which had rightly called for a counter-summit, the mass action against the Summit was met with the usual brute force of the police. The use of the machinery of violence against peaceful and unarmed demonstrators has never ceased since the colonial period. The Constitution of Kenya, 2010 decrees under Article 37 that Every person has the right, peaceably and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket, and to present petition to public authorities. While the Constitution envisioned that this Article would make the police protect demonstrators, this has never happened. In all cases of mass action, the police have been armed with teargas, water cannons, and invariably accompanied by criminal gangs and goons who are either police informers or the militia of politicians, or both. 

As I write, some of the demonstrators arrested are held in police stations. Some have been charged with criminal offences under the Penal Code. This mass action against the Summit was joined by the visiting international comrades, including the Indian scholar, activist, writer, and publisher, Vijay Prashad. There was also robust mass action on digital platforms against the Summit. The Kenya Left Forum, a United Front of social democratic and revolutionary movements and political parties, issued a statement condemning the Summit and the violence, arrests, and incarceration of activists who demonstrated peacefully and unarmed.

Even before the Summit, there have been open debates among the social forces and intellectuals in Kenya on the wisdom of having military bases without the participation of the people of Kenya. There is an American base on Lamu Island in the Indian Ocean. The British have a base in Nanyuki near Mount Kenya. And now the French are going to have a base in Kenya. Kenyans have decried the existence of foreign bases on very patriotic grounds: military bases violate our national sovereignty. Military bases expose us to dangers because we have taken sides if there is war. Military bases humiliate Kenyans as a people. 

There is attendant racism behind these bases: the soldiers walk into Kenya without being subjected to immigration and customs protocols. They get in with their weapons intact. They are free to conduct exercises in the country and are not obligated to clean up the mess they cause which results in livestock being killed by unexploded live ammunition^[1]. Our women have been raped and killed by these foreign soldiers. Our compatriots do not get justice because of the impunity granted to these soldiers on Kenyan soil. No wonder in Kenya we say the British never left!

The worst aspect of these bases is that they subvert our supreme law, the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. They are established without the participation of the Kenyan people as decreed by Article 10 of our Constitution. The fundamental right of participation by the citizenry extends to trade agreements, national debts, infrastructural agreements, and all aspects that involve the exercise of the people’s sovereign power which is delegated to the Executive, Legislature, Judiciary, and other national institutions. Yet foreign interests and their governments do not respect our supreme law. And these are the same countries, and their respective governments that routinely pontificate about democracy and the rule of law. What hypocrisy, perfidy, double-standards, and racism?

Kenyan social forces and intellectuals understand the transformed international system. One clear outcome of the current war against the people of Iran is that Europe has become increasingly marginal to major international decision making. The language emerging from multiple observers, describing the war as a possible “Suez moment” for Zionist Israel and the United States^[2], signals a wider global alignment in which the old imperial hierarchies are being reconfigured. The Canadian Prime Minister has stated this repeatedly.^[3]

What is undeniable, however, is that France and the European Union have been significantly weakened in the present restructuring of international politics. They have been sidelined and their vaunted navies can do nothing to open the Straits of Hormuz. The patriotic position for Africans across classes should, therefore, be the defence of the working people, the push for peace to end the illegal war; and highlight that even the Pope is calling out those who declare that they will bomb humans back to the stone age. It is my view that the objective of the Summit is to attach Africa to the declining European project. In this regard, African social forces and intellectuals should provide our people with a broader range of information than what has so far been circulated in the mainstream media. We should pay particular attention to the Government of Senegal and its expulsion of the French military forces, a development that reflects the deepening crisis of French influence in West Africa. There has also been considerable discussion regarding the Alliance of Sahelian States, yet insufficient attention has been given to the broader implications of Senegal’s action and to the desperation increasingly visible in French policy across the region.

Intellectuals and jurists all over the world continue to clarify questions concerning wars of aggression, crimes against peace, sovereignty and the erosion of international law. A great example of such action is the work of the Gaza Tribunal Jury of Conscience which has been active since October 2024. Led by a renowned Professor of International Law, Richard Falk, the findings^[4] of the Tribunal have clarified the correct position in International Law in the case of the genocide in Gaza.

Within the wider context, the strategic relationship linking Zionist Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the Puntland authorities acquire greater significance. The role of the UAE and Zionist Israel in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in the destabilization of the Congo basin, deserves more attention in relation to the Summit. Likewise, Africans should be aware of the documented role of French interests in the gas sector in Mozambique,^[5] and the broader militarization of resource extraction in the region. The unresolved colonial question of Mayotte also has direct implications for the stability of the Indian Ocean and exposes the continuing reality of France as an active colonial power. Consequently, the Kenyan alliance with France cannot simply be understood as a neocolonial arrangement in the conventional sense. It raises more fundamental questions concerning anti-colonialism, sovereignty, and the right of peoples to self-determination.

So, what is the central political question about this Summit?

Simply put, Africa and Kenya have formations organizing social forces capable of defending the sovereignty of Africa and Kenya. The status quo in Africa continues to convince its citizens that this status quo is undesirable, unsustainable, and unacceptable. There is no exploitation, domination, and oppression that is recorded in history that was never resisted. The links and continuities of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles have not ended. They continue in the people’s struggles to overthrow the status quo on the planet. In Kenya, Africa, and the entire planet, the burning political question is the quest for alternative political leadership that will end the status quo. This status quo continues to build a global citizens’ consciousness that identifies the collective enemy of the citizens of the planet. Small acts of solidarity in Africa and the world have had great significance. We have seen them in the opposition to genocide in Gaza, the illegal war against Iran, and the opposition to genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan.

Willy Mutunga was Chief Justice & President of the Supreme Court, Kenya, 2011-2016. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor in Public Law, Kabarak Law School and also serves as a Member of The Gaza Tribunal Jury of Conscience.

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