In a lengthy interview in Le Monde, Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna defended France's Africa strategy. She differentiated the ousting of Niger's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, with the situation in Chad, where she said Paris counted on N'Djamena's military government delivering on its promise to restore civilian rule.
"One cannot see our relations with the continent through the single prism" of the Sahel crises, Colonna added. "It's not 3,000 or 5,000 people demonstrating in a stadium in Niamey ... that can resume our relations with 1.5 million Africans."
France's position, she said, "is to listen to Africans, not to decide in their place."
For a while, Macron - born after France's last colony in Africa, Djibouti, gained its independence - seemed the right man for the job.
"I am of a generation that doesn't tell Africans what to do," he told cheering students in Burkina Faso, shortly after his election six years ago.
Macron pledged to return looted colonial-era artifacts, although only a fraction has been shipped back, and sought new ties elsewhere, including with Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia and Angola. Like his recent predecessors, he maintained that the tangle of post-colonial business and political ties dubbed Francafrique was long dead.
In February, Macron promised to draw down French forces in Africa and create a new "security partnership," with bases on the continent transformed depending on African needs, and jointly managed with African staff.
A coherent policy
Skeptics say Macron hasn't always walked his talk. They point to many enduring trappings of French influence - from thousands of troops still stationed in Africa to a raft of longstanding mining concessions benefitting French companies, and the CFA franc, requiring West and Central African members to deposit half their foreign exchange reserves with the French treasury.
Anti-French sentiment is on the rise in more stable countries, like Senegal, due to a youthful population untethered to the past, but very aware of the challenges of getting visas to France.
Critics point to what they consider a series of French missteps, too, in the Sahel. Despite early wins, France's decade-long counterterrorism operation there lost local trust, they say, and finally was shuttered last year amid a spreading Islamist insurgency. Even as France promotes democracy, skeptics describe a tacit acceptance of some authoritarian governments like Chad.
"France needs to have a coherent policy," says Sciences-Po researcher Miette, who argues anti-French sentiment is not the real threat to Paris, but rather "a profound questioning of France's Africa policy."
He counts among those who believe it is not too late for Paris to hit the reset button yet again. With other authoritarian regimes potentially at risk of falling - in Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea - the sooner, the better.
"France has everything to win in changing its Africa policy," Miette says. "It needs to go beyond talk and be concrete."