Kenyan state hardens repression of activists around French imperial summit

The Kenyan state is ramping up its repression against activists, particularly anti-imperialist and communist organisers. Hundreds recently mobilised against the Africa Forward Summit (AFS) conference in Nairobi.

At least 11 protestors were arrested as they marched against the AFS as part of the Pan-Africanism Summit Against Imperialism (PASAI) on 12 May. Among those arrested were British, French, Greek, and South Korean revolutionary party delegates.

Officially the ‘Africa Forward Summit: Africa-France Partnerships for Innovation and Growth’, AFS is the first major high-level French-led summit to be held in any non-francophone African nation.

Opponents such as the PASAI consider AFS to be a neo-colonial enterprise, orchestrated and led by the openly imperialist, neoliberal Macron regime in France. France currently seeks to strengthen its regional influence in Eastern Africa as its powerful grip is shaken off in the Western continent.

Repression of Kenyan communists

The following day, 13 May 2026, General Secretary of the Kenyan communist party (CPMK) Booker Omole attended a court hearing in Nairobi on a case linked to his previous arrest and abduction. During the proceedings, the court adjourned the matter and scheduled the next hearing for 27 May 2026.

Reports from supporters and observers described the case as politically charged, with growing criticism over the circumstances surrounding his arrest and detention.

Omole stated outside court that this repression has been mounting for the past decade. He said:

The communists of this country have been charged on organising street protests to defend the poorest of the poorest … Comrades, now we are criminals … now we are “narcos”; now we are “small-arms traders”; now we are “terrorists”.

African masses mobilise against imperialism

The AFS comes as France’s notoriously extractive ‘post’-colonial France-Afrique arrangement in the Western continent and Sahel region suffers a string of defeats. These include the loss of military outposts and control across its former colonies.

National sovereigntist figures and military leaders in nations such as Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali often frame their political platforms in anti-French-imperialist terms.

The PASAI counter-summit was arranged to agitate against what organisers call:

a rebranded offensive of imperialist recolonization disguised behind the mask of environmental diplomacy and financial reform.

Arrests were made after protesters attempted to disrupt the gathering at the Kenyatta International Convention Center, where French President Macron himself was hosted.

William Ruto’s increasingly authoritarian administration hosted Macron, gathering with various African rulers, elite autocrats, careerist politicians and neoliberal loyalists.

Muhemsi Mwakihwelo, a Tanzanian socialist organiser, wrote of the protests:

The response from the Kenyan security apparatus was predictable: brute force, arrests, intimidation, and disappearances – all in service of protecting imperial prestige and suppressing dissent.

Three weeks before, some 53 Kenyan protestors appeared in courts – ten in one dock and 43 in another courthouse – charged with blocking a road and “free movement of the people” during one demonstration.

Ongoing repression and waning British control

The recent mobilisations and subsequent arrests come after a tumultuous couple of years for Kenyan President William Ruto’s elite-led, comprador government.

June 2025 saw at least 50 people killed by police gunfire in anti-government protests. The BBC framed this such that you’d suspect one prominent arrestee, Boniface Mwangi, of being partially guilty; yet multiple human rights groups blamed the state’s enforcers.

The protests followed shockingly similar demonstrations led by Gen-Z in June 2024, in which Ruto deployed the military and government forces killed dozens of activists.

Ruto and the Kenyan ruling class gained recognition as a major NATO non-member ally – a status also held by Israel – in 2024, indicating the international priorities of the present regime. Pan-Africanists, they are not.

The BBC labelled this NATO alignment “crucial for regional security” at the time.

The US, UK and now likely French military intelligence interests in the country stem from a desire to maintain trade openness, or rather trade dependency. British oversees officials show regular contempt for the highly unequal and impoverished nation.

The Canary’s Joe Glenton wrote in 2025 of Britain’s waning colonial control in Kenya:

Before and since occupation the British have treated Kenya as a resource to be exploited … Yet it seems that grip has loosened in recent years as more and more Kenyans rail against this “occupying presence.”

The characterisation of British troops as an “occupying presence” actually comes from a report authored and published by British MPs into the countries’ bilateral relations.

Yet despite arrests, disappearances, killings and intimidation of organisers, the people of Kenya are doubtless wise enough to recognise that one European imperialist power is no better than another.

French imperialism: alive but declining

Speaking at the AFS, Macron made remarks of a typical neoliberal, post-political style:

It is a new philosophy … not looking backwards, neither left nor right, as my friend the President Ruto says, but to look ahead of us.

Macron stated that he wishes to be by the side of Africa “for its own agenda,” and noted the return of looted colonial-era artefacts and his desire to “co-invest” in Africa. Macron even went so far as to absurdly call the French “the real Pan-Africanists” – perhaps what he envisions is continent-wide French recolonisation.

Perhaps more than any other European imperial power in Africa, France maintained a decades-long stranglehold on fledgling post-independence nations. Particularly effective in this was the 1945 imposition of a French-controlled CFA Franc currency.

The CFA Franc was pegged to the French Franc until 2002, when it converted to the Euro, but it remains printed entirely in the Bank of France. Even bloggers from the elite-coded London School of Economics recognise it as “monetary imperialism.”

The CFA has no independent value beyond its conversion rate to the Euro, which remains controlled by the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), frequently run by appointees of the French Treasury.

French corporations and a local Francophile ruling class have long upheld control over the region. This ran through military occupation, then CFA-style economic coercion, alongside a comprador elite class and often violence through proxy militias.

Muhemsi Mwakihwelo wrote also about France’s eyes on Africa:

Imperialism does not invest in Africa to liberate Africans. It invests to secure markets, extract resources, discipline governments, and reproduce dependency under modern financial and military arrangements.

But Macron was shunned on his trip by some schoolchildren in favour of a famous marathon runner. So too can we expect the Kenyan people to shun French imperialism in favour of their sovereignty.

Featured image via kenyans.co.ke / The Canary

By Cameron Baillie

Source link