Congolese President Denis Sassou N'Guesso will be received by Emmanuel Macron next week. The French head of state dreams of a photo with Sassou N'Guesso and Ali Bongo next March, on the occasion of the One Forest Summit.
Has the President of the French Republic embarked on an impossible mission? Since the Sharm el-Sheikh Conference of 2022 on climate change (COP27) and the announcement of the organization of the One Forest Summit, in March 2023 in Gabon, Emmanuel Macron has embarked on a strange crusade: he would indeed reconcile Ali Bongo, the Gabonese head of state, and his Congolese counterpart Denis Sassou N'Guesso.
At the end of November, Josué Serres, the Elysée's global affairs technical adviser, went to Libreville to lay the first stone of the summit devoted to ecology. There, he met with the Gabonese Minister of Environment and Forests, Lee White. What confirm the organization of the African version of the One Planet Summit.
Two irreconcilable men?
But the strained relations between “DSN” and Ali Bongo, to say the least, pose a real concern for the French presidency. Because if Emmanuel Macron has planned to participate in the summit devoted to the preservation of the forests of Central Africa, it seems to condition the success of this meeting on the presence of a Congolese delegation which would be led by Denis Sassou N'Guesso.
In theory, nothing is impossible: it often happens that the two enemy presidents cross paths. This was the case in Glasgow, we remember. In the corridors of the COP26, Sassou and Bongo had seen each other again without any problem. But the presence of many other heads of state had certainly helped to ease the tensions between the two men.
For the One Forest Summit in 2023, the situation is different: the Congo Basin spans several countries, including the Republic of Congo and Gabon. The region is one of the lungs of the planet and each country in the area has its own ecological policy. Ali Bongo has, for several years, embarked on a green policy that aims to be avant-garde and which, for specialists, is nothing other than “greenwashing”.
Denis Sassou N'Guesso, for his part, "continues to alert and warn ordinary mortals of the dangers linked to the destruction of the environment and climate change" and is an “ecolo-visionary and climate-optimist leader”, sums up Michel Innocent Peya, author of a book devoted to DSN's “Green Vision”. There is therefore no question of doing without the presence of the Congolese president at the summit next March.
A visit from Macron to Brazzaville?
To do this, Emmanuel Macron will receive Denis Sassou N'Guesso on December 17 – or on the 19th if the France team reaches the final of the Football World Cup – at the Élysée. The Congolese president will have previously traveled to Washington for the USA-Africa summit. Macron has planned to discuss with his Congolese counterpart the protection of forests in Central Africa and will try to persuade the latter to accompany him to Libreville.
A balancing act. To succeed in convincing DSN of the merits of his request, Emmanuel Macron will have to let go of ballast on other subjects. Among the proposals that the French head of state should make, a visit to Brazzaville on the sidelines of the summit. The last French state visit dates back thirteen years already, under Nicolas Sarkozy.