French President Emmanuel Macron is facing backlash after he interrupted a panel at the Africa Forward Summit in Kenya to demand silence from the audience.<\/p>\n
Macron stormed the stage to rebuke audience members for what he called a \u201ctotal lack of respect\u201d, accusing them of disrupting speakers during a presentation by artists and young entrepreneurs. He had earlier described himself as a \u201cPan-Africanist\u201d during a news conference.<\/p>\n
The summit is meant to showcase France\u2019s new policy for the continent – a shift from a former colonial power seen as dominating to what Paris describes as a partnership of equals. On Tuesday, Macron announced a US$27 billion investment into various sectors in Africa, including energy, artificial intelligence and agriculture.<\/p>\n
Videos of Macron\u2019s heated intervention on Monday quickly spread across social media, drawing a mix of mockery, praise and criticism.<\/p>\n
Appearing visibly frustrated by the noise in the room, Macron abruptly walked onto the stage and asked the speaker to hand him the microphone, saying he would \u201crestore order\u201d.<\/p>\n
Addressing the audience in English, he criticised attendees for talking over the speakers and creating disruptions during the session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French President Emmanuel Macron is facing backlash after he interrupted a panel at the Africa Forward Summit in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[493,8904,9984,10707,36,5,1721,607,559,4107,30,190,648,3284],"class_list":{"0":"post-14196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-africa-forward-summit","10":"tag-african","11":"tag-dakar","12":"tag-emmanuel-macron","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-france-unbowed","15":"tag-french","16":"tag-kenya","17":"tag-nairobi","18":"tag-paris","19":"tag-senegal","20":"tag-west-africa","21":"tag-x"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}