More \u200bthan 30 African leaders kicked off a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron in Kenya on Monday, as Paris sought new deals \u200cand partnerships amid signs of\u00a0fading influence\u00a0in some of its former colonies on the continent.<\/p>\n
The Africa Forward Summit is the first France has organised in an English-speaking nation and follows a\u00a0series of setbacks\u00a0in West Africa, where some Francophone leaders have cut back on security and commercial links with their erstwhile colonial \u200bruler.<\/p>\n
Seated alongside Kenyan President William Ruto on a panel discussion with young entrepreneurs about technology and artificial intelligence, Macron said \u200bAfrica and France were equal partners with common objectives.<\/p>\n
“A lot of solutions are made in the U.S. \u2060or made in China,” he said. “I think we have a common fight … which is to build our strategic autonomy for Europe and \u200bAfrica. And if we build it together, we will be much stronger.”<\/p>\n
Africa’s richest man, the Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, is attending alongside more \u200bthan 30 African presidents, deputy presidents and prime ministers, and executives from leading French firms such as TotalEnergies and Orange.<\/p>\n
Deals worth more than $1 billion were announced on Sunday during a state visit between Macron and Ruto, including plans by French shipping group CMA CGM to invest 700 million euros ($823 million) to \u200bmodernise a terminal at the Kenyan port of Mombasa.<\/p>\n
Investments in clean energy, AI and other areas are also expected to be announced.<\/p>\n
\u200bFrance – which has organised similar events in French-speaking nations since the 1970s – has touted rising trade with African countries, though it has experienced disappointments too.<\/p>\n
\u200cLast year, \u2060Ruto’s government terminated a $1.5 billion highway expansion deal with a consortium led by France’s Vinci SA and handed it to Chinese firms after Kenyan authorities said it saddled them with too much risk.<\/p>\n
KENYA WANTS SUMMIT OUTCOMES DISCUSSED AT G7<\/strong><\/p>\n Kenya hopes to use the summit to attract French investors looking to take advantage of the pan-African free trade area (AfCFTA) and to advance talks on making the global financial system fairer to \u200bheavily indebted African countries.<\/p>\n The Kenyan president \u200bwill attend the G7 summit \u2060next month in Evian-les-Bains at the invitation of France, which holds the group’s rotating presidency.<\/p>\n “We believe it’s a good thing if critical outcomes of this meeting … can also be mainstreamed as critical agenda items by \u200bthe G7,” Kenyan Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi told Reuters.<\/p>\n France has traditionally had its closest African ties \u200bin its former \u2060colonies in the west and centre of the continent but is confronting rising anti-French sentiment.<\/p>\n Coups since 2020 in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger brought to power military officers who expelled French troops and invited in Russian mercenaries. France also handed over control of its last major military facility in \u2060Senegal last \u200bJuly after Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye said French bases were incompatible with \u200bthe country’s sovereignty.<\/p>\n Macron on Sunday downplayed the absence of some leaders at the summit, noting that several West African heads of state, including Faye, and civil society representatives would \u200bbe there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More \u200bthan 30 African leaders kicked off a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron in Kenya on Monday, as Paris sought new deals \u200cand partnerships amid signs of\u00a0fading influence\u00a0in some of its former colonies on the continent. The Africa Forward Summit is the first France has organised in an English-speaking nation and follows a\u00a0series of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":11,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32,2362],"tags":[5136,164,111],"class_list":["post-20835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","tag-africa-forward-summit","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-kenya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20837,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20835\/revisions\/20837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}