French President Macron Under Fire For Blaming Africa's Underdevelopment on Women With 7 Kids

France’s newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, just learned a painful political lesson: In the age of social media, making casual references to the “civilizational” problems of Africa and the demographic challenges of African women having “seven or eight” children is going to blow up in your face.

Here's what happened. During a press conference at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, a journalist from the Ivory Coast asked Macron why there was no Marshall Plan for Africa, a reference to the massive amount of economic aid the US poured into destroyed European countries following the Second World War.

Macron responded with a three-and-a-half-minute soliloquy. He meandered on about the “civilizational” problems that Africa faces, and the differences between a postwar reconstruction project like the Marshall Plan and modern-day aid programs designed to address a variety of problems in a variety of countries.

Macron’s use of the word “civilizational” probably would have been enough to get him into hot water; it certainly sounds like a casually racist assessment that Europe’s “civilization” is different from, and perhaps better than, Africa’s.

But what came next triggered a social media firestorm that represented the first clear stumble by the new French leader. More than halfway through the answer, Macron said that one key challenge facing Africa is places where women still have “seven or eight children,” a birthrate he called continuously destabilizing.

The clip, as it’s being shared says:

 “The challenge of Africa, it is totally different, it is much deeper, it is civilizational, today. What are the problems in Africa? Failed states, the complex democratic transitions, demographic transitions, which is one of the main challenges facing Africa.”

And then it soon fades nearly seamlessly into the words “a successful demographic transition when countries still have seven to eight children per woman — you can decide to spend billions of euros, you will not stabilize anything.”

What the hell does that mean? Much of the internet has decided it means Macron is blaming almost all African problems on high birthrates, and on women — in other words, that African women are the problem of Africa. That sounds very, very bad.

Macron’s full response is somewhat obnoxious and ham-handed, but it’s actually not asobnoxious and ham-handed as it originally sounded. The full video seems to make him sound much more like an International Monetary Fund or World Bank wonk: in other words, out of touch, philosophical, and a bit like a latter-day colonialist.