French President Emmanuel Macron continues a three-day visit to Algeria on Friday, intended to “build the future” without hiding anything from the colonial past, with a focus on young entrepreneurs and start-ups.
The Head of State arrived at the European cemetery Saint-Eugène, the main one in the capital during the time of the French colonization of Algeria. He laid a wreath in front of a monument to the “dead for France”, while the “dead ringtone” sounded before the Marseillaise sung by the choir of the French army.
Then, in the middle of the pines and cypresses, he wandered for a long time between the different sectors, Christian, and military, then lingered particularly in the Jewish square. In front of the marble tomb of Roger Hanin, an actor and director born in Algeria, he meditated with the director Alexandre Arcady and the economist Jacques Attali, both born in Algeria, by his side.
Another highlight of the day placed under the sign of the relaunch of the bilateral partnership, Mr. Macron will meet young entrepreneurs with the ambition of creating a Franco-Algerian incubator of digital start-ups.
He will also visit the Great Mosque of Algiers, with its monumental minaret, before heading to Oran (west), the country’s second city renowned for its open-mindedness and creativity.
The French president and his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune sealed their reconciliation Thursday during a meeting of more than two hours, after months of diplomatic quarrel.
Mr. Tebboune welcomed the “encouraging results” which make it possible to “draw up promising prospects in the special partnership that binds us”.
France and Algeria will relaunch several intergovernmental committees, particularly in the economic and strategic fields, he announced.
The visit coincides with the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and the proclamation of Algeria’s independence in 1962.
The French president underlined the desire of the two countries to look to the future and “work together on this” common past (…) complex, painful”.
Algiers and Paris will create “a mixed commission of historians” in order to “look at the whole of this historical period”, “from the beginning of colonization to the war of liberation, without taboo, with a will (…) to full access to our archives,” Macron said.
– Gas and visas –
The two leaders also discussed the situation in Mali, from where the French army has just withdrawn, the rest of the Sahel, Libya and Western Sahara which “require joint efforts to consolidate stability in the region”, noted Mr. Tebboune.
Western Sahara, claimed by the separatists of the Polisario Front, exacerbates the regional rivalry between Algeria and Morocco, which claims the “Moroccanness” of this territory.
Deliveries of Algerian gas to Europe are also on everyone’s mind. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Algeria, the leading gas producer in Africa and one of the top ten in the world, has been in great demand by Europeans in a hurry to reduce their dependence on Russian gas.
This is the second time that Emmanuel Macron has visited Algeria as president, after a first visit in December 2017.
Relations between the two countries were then in good shape with a young French president, born after 1962, who had described French colonization as a “crime against humanity” before his election.
But they quickly petered out, overtaken by memories that were difficult to reconcile after 132 years of colonization, a bloody war and the departure of one million French people from Algeria in 1962.
The excuses expected by Algiers for colonization never came. In October 2021, comments by Emmanuel Macron on the Algerian “politico-military system” and the Algerian nation caused a serious rupture.
The Elysée tenant has since made amends and the two presidents have gradually restarted the bilateral partnership.
But the delicate question of visas granted by France, the number of which has been halved, in particular continued to weigh on mutual relations.
Mr. Macron alluded to it on Thursday, referring to decisions taken for “chosen mobility” in favor of athletes, entrepreneurs or academics in order to “build more common projects”.
