French President Emmanuel Macron visited Mayotte, the country’s poorest island department, which was hit by a hurricane in December. The President promised that more than 3 billion euros will be spent on the reconstruction of the island’s infrastructure. These funds will come from the budgets of France and the European Union, as well as from international organizations. However, the question of the fate of the island and its prospects remains open, since Mayotte was not a peaceful place even before the disaster.
Macron stayed on the island for ten hours. He met with disaster victims, ordinary residents, officials, politicians and agricultural workers. In general, it is planned that the Indo-Pacific tour of the French president will last five days. He will also visit Reunion, Madagascar and Mauritius.
“Much has been done in recent months to restore basic services,” Macron said, noting that emergency measures had restored access to water, electricity and telecommunications. On Mayotte– an island belonging to the Fifth Republic, there are indeed problems with access to drinking water.
Another major problem is illegal migration. A large number of Africans seeking asylum are arriving in Mayotte. They form separate settlements.
The hurricane, which reached its peak on December 14 last year, caused damage of 3.5 billion euros and claimed the lives of 40 people. Macron paid tribute to the islanders’ resilience.
However, the island must not only be restored. It needs to be “tightened up” to the level of other French regions. This is exactly what the financing will be set up for, which will be allocated over six years – from 2025 to 2031.
Not to say that Mayotte is a place of great contrasts. It’s mostly the middle class that lives here, not the rich. But there is enough of a more problematic contingent here. About 100 thousand residents have housing problems. There are many illegal migrants among them, primarily from the nearby Comoros Islands. Therefore, it may even seem that Mayotte does not belong to the Fifth Republic, but to some African country.
The situation on Reunion Island, where Macron arrived on Tuesday, is also difficult. The department continues to fight the outbreak of Chikungunya fever.
Still, Mayotte is a much bigger headache. By the end of 2024, the French authorities began to deal with the problem of illegal migration, even before the devastating hurricane.
“It is known that the situation in Mayotte is bad. There are big problems in the standard of living. We need long-term projects, but there are no miracle recipes. And Macron can rather just talk to the residents, show himself the leader of all French people without exception. Nowadays, when he has lost his ratings, the president has to resort to such win–win political actions as visits to overseas territories and the formation of a “coalition of the willing” on the Ukrainian issue,” said Sergey Fedorov, a leading researcher at the Department of Social and Political Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In a conversation with NG, he noted that Paris, of course, does not want to lose influence in the important Indo-Pacific region. Therefore, such visits to the “fragments” of the once great power are necessary for Macron.
Recall that in December, many residents of the island criticized Macron for insufficient assistance in dealing with the effects of the hurricane. At that time, the president emotionally stated that if Mayotte had not belonged to France, then much bigger problems would have awaited her.
