Macron ATTACKS Ibrahim Traoré for rejecting Nairobi summit invitation |Plug Tv Kenya

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Uh just one question. Um are you concerned that some of these uh c some of the countries in the western uh Africa region are not part of this uh conversation? Uh you know those countries in the Sahel region please.

[00:00:15]>> First question Emanuel. Um I I want just to clarify the fact that Western African countries will be present.

[00:00:25]>> Mhm. I mean president of Sagal, president of Ivoricos, president of Gabon, president of DRC and some many others will be here. It's hard to say that Western Africa will not be present in this room.

[00:00:38]You have three countries and I do regret that which decided because of the coup and the behaviors of of uh the military people in charge to put them aside from the rest of the club. By the way, aside of Echoas as well and others, it doesn't mean that Afric West Africa is not part of this meeting.

[00:00:59]The biggest leaders of Western Africa will be here. And beyond that, we we we've been very vigilant to have civil society even from S states being present because we can disagree with some of these governments quote to quote, but we never disagree with people. We love these people.

[00:01:20]in Mali in Burkina and Burkina Faso in in Niger. So all these people are involved in in this conference and in this summit and we will have a lot of intellectuals, academics, artists, entrepreneurs coming from this countries being present >> as of November in the speech I gave in Wagadugu. So we have no desire with this Africa forward summit after the one that was held in Mubil in 2021. There's no desire to hide anything. No, it's just a way of saying Africa is a whole and we are really pan-African and we believe that Africa is a continent and that the continent has a lot to uh to build uh with the youngest population in the world a fantastic demographic dividend and with the greatest growth in the world. The the growth of Africa was uh just higher than Southeast Asia. So we have to take a different look at Africa and indeed it is a continent that I want no longer friends to consider as our backyard quote unquote in which our uh CEOs would have guaranteed uh contracts or partnerships because uh it would be in French speaking countries. No or because France would give some kind of guarantee or insurance that things would would happen. No. That's over since 2017 because way before 2017 our companies had started losing market shares in French-sp speakaking a African countries because Africa is a competitive ground.

[00:02:49]I mean and rightly so and because I I believe that we need a well balanced partnership and a fair partnership. So the transformation we've been carrying out for the past 10 years is based on state sovereignty and territorial integrity. There's been a coup in Mali.

[00:03:04]You don't want France to be in Malib because you don't want to suffice terrorism. Well, we'll just leave. No offense. No offense.

[00:03:13]But but the events have shown that this wasn't not the best solution or the best option for Mali. And I would like to pay tribute to our soldiers here who fell.

[00:03:22]Too many of them fell for the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Mali between 2013 and 2001. But we really rethought or revamped our relationship based on security. Not not to pull out but to rebalance things. Wherever there were bases that were too obvious that that were the remnants of pastimes, we transformed these French bases as elements of partnership like we did in Gabon and we re uh we founded our relationship in Ben, Ghana, Gabon. We reinvented it in in Western African countries and it works and it gives us excellent results in Benin and in Nigeria.

[00:04:05]We rethought our economic relations. The summit testifies to it. we reshaped the cultural relations and I mean um when talking about um uh the restitution of cultural uh objects people are saying France would never agree but it it was a true so uh we're showing that there is a well balanced partnership western African countries are here are present in France when we see what we've been able to do over the past years with Ben in security and when we see what we've doing with Gabong and what we done with the president of Sagal and we'll see tomorrow when we see what we're doing in sports in culture or in reinventing the our partnership in security uh with localmies I mean we're doing wonderful things we're transforming things and we are creating something unprecedented between in the relationship between France and the African continent now Kenya that no French president has visited before my visit in 2019. I mean, South South Africa has created a strong um atmosphere competitiveness, but I could mention what we managed to do in the past few years with Morocco or to tell you more about uh our relationship with Portuguese speaking countries. So, I'm looking forward too and I can see that we have transformed quite a lot of things in the past 10 years and we've never avoided French speaking African countries. I was in Gabon last spring and next uh uh fall I'll be in Gabon Sagal and Kivo and those are French speaking countries. So we're still moving forward and we're present through our renewed partnerships with all of these countries. relations between Africa and France as we see it uh as the way we want to uh implement uh are built on courage, respect and a will to have a shared agenda. That's what we've been working on for 10 years. We spoke about it yesterday, so I won't go into it now.

[00:06:09]Why am I so convinced that this is the right way 10 years down the track?

[00:06:14]Because the challenges of Africa and Europe are shared challenges. We all want peace, prosperity, sovereignty.

[00:06:24]Europe has always been fighting for this. Uh and after the Second World War, the EU was built on this struggle for peace and sovereignty. And now the European agenda is indeed one built on strategic autonomy so as not to depend on American or Chinese uh um power and when we want to defend the rule of law hum uh um uh international law. We be uh we believe in uh equality in equal footing trade relations. Uh we defend the climate. We that is what Europe is all about and that is the exact same challenge that Africa has before it. What Africa wants is peace, prosperity and independence.

[00:07:19]And deep down this partnership uh that is embodied here in this Africa forward summit is a bond between Africa and Europe. This is what France is working for. peace, prosperity and this independent, this strategic independence. It's a very powerful thing. And if we can do this uh then it will enable us to reconstruct together a multilateral order that has been thrown into upheaval, been jeopardized, affects all of us, uh and deep down this can be a strong basis for moving forward together. Peace is going to require African unity. And I really firmly believe this and I'm delighted to see so many of my brothers here, heads of state and government from so many nations who have come to Nairobi. I know that you're all very busy. So I'm very grateful to you for making this because it really does share this image of a united continent from Megreb right down to the Indian Ocean um the south of the continent, Western Africa, Central Africa and Eastern Africa. Remember, all of these different parts of Africa, given that it is so large, are all part nonetheless of one continent with a shared agenda. which means that if we want to be beside you, it means we have uh uh equal representation, better representation uh for Africa in international instances such as uh the UN, the financial institutions and we want it represented in the security council of the UN. In.