Kenya to host France-Africa Summit in tricky times
Nairobi will host the Africa-France Summit in 2026, a conference coming when Paris is struggling to keep its former colonies on its side.
Kenyan and French officials said the move for Kenya to host the conference that has traditionally been held in France or its former colonies, signals expanding relations with French authorities .
State House Spokesperson Hussein Mohammed said President William Ruto and his French colleague Emmanuel Macron made the announcement during the 79th United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Both leaders made the announcement while at the Paris Pact for the People and the Planet Coalition leaders’ lunch that was hosted by Mr Macron.
The France-Africa Summit is a three-yearly conference that often brings together heads of state and government, civil society representatives and private sector leaders to discuss and advance reforms of international financial institutions and governance systems.
It will be the first time the summit will be held outside a Francophone African country or France.
“The summit will also focus on addressing the planetary crisis and usually brings together African youth to discuss their problems,” Mr Mohammed said.
“It is also aimed at probing and redefining fundamentals of the Africa-France relationship by responding to the problems and expectations of young people.”
France’s initial ties were often to its former colonies and other French-speaking regions. The summit changed in 2021 to expand, inviting government leaders, professionals and activists from other countries that had often been left out.
Last year, it themed the summit around youth, inviting young people from countries like Kenya and Uganda.
Yet that was also the time some French-speaking countries in West Africa were turning away from Paris.
Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, for instance, have suspended ties with France, which they accuse of fomenting bad governance. The three countries, as well as Guinea, are suspended from the African Union for following military coups in the past three years.
Gabon too is run by a military junta but it acted differently after toppling an elected government by retaining ties with the French.
Additionally, the French, by expanding beyond their traditional language boundaries, are taking cue from the British whose Commonwealth group has expanded to include French-speaking countries like Togo and Gabon, as well as Mozambique (Portuguese). Rwanda too, is a member of the Commonwealth, although it adopted English only 20 years ago, after years of using French as official language.
Kenya says the event will provide an opportunity for Kenya to exert its geopolitical influence and assert its lead in climate diplomacy that President Ruto has been pushing at the global stage. Korir Sing’oei, the Principal Secretary for Foreign Affairs said it will be “an excellent opportunity to foster French-Africa relations and demonstrate the increasing irrelevance of Anglophone-Francophone divide on the continent.”
The agenda of the summit ranges from gender equality, official development assistance and its impacts, democracy and governance, biodiversity conservation, new technologies, employability and youth mobility.
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