FULL SPEECH: French President Macron Addresses Africa Forward Summit 2026 at KICC, Nairobi | AC1Z

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]enforcing Africa's economic position today and the importance of partnership such as the Africa France partnership.

[00:00:06]Asante son your excellence and now it's my profound honor to welcome to the stage our next speaker who is also our co-convener.

[00:00:15]He's a global leader who has consistently championed international corporation and a world of rules based order. Has been at the forefront of advancing dialogue on global economic reform and strategic partnerships between Africa and France. Please welcome to the internship his excellence Mr. Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic of France. Bevo President.

[00:00:45]Thank you so much Mr President of Williamy head of states and government secretary general secretary general of permanent commission of the African Union Secretary General of Francopon ministers ambassadors entrepreneurs ladies and gentlemen The president has said everything and so I just want to add a few convictions so that we can then move on to our work.

[00:01:34]This is a new type of summit, it's a new philosophy, and so we are going to take this philosophy to its logical conclusion.

[00:01:42]First, this summit began with meetings of youth, businesses, culture, and sports. And besides, right after this session we will meet with representatives from the business world who will tell us their conclusion and we will exchange ideas with them.

[00:01:59]And ultimately, the conviction I would like to share with you is that the agenda that the African continent and France must have, the one in which I believe, is in no way to look back, nor left or right as my friend President Routau would say, but indeed to look forward.

[00:02:16]And what I have strived to do for the past 10 years is to build a relationship that looks at the past with clear eyes. And so we had this work that was done with Algeria, Cameroon, Rwanda and several others who are courageously looking at the present and who have returned works of art, who want to reinvent the monetary and economic relationship, who want to invest in sport, in cultural and creative industries, in co-investment with the continent and who will respectfully stand alongside Africa for its own agenda.

[00:02:53]And so the relationship between Africa and France, as we see it, as we think it, as we act on it, is indeed based on legality, courage, respect and a desire to have, at the bottom, a shared agenda. That's what we've been doing for the last 10 years. We talked about this at length yesterday and I don't want to go on any longer. Why am I convinced that this is even more true today than it was 10 years ago?

[00:03:19]Because the challenges facing Africa and Europe are the same, we want peace, prosperity, and sovereignty.

[00:03:29]Europe fought for this.

[00:03:32]After the Second World War, she built the European Union first to achieve peace and then a common market to achieve prosperity. And today the gendarmerie, not of France or America, on a middle path that respects international law, that believes in the multilateral order that we have built, that believes in open trade, that does not believe in the hegemony of some over others, that believes that science is the best way to change the climate of the state of what Europe is doing.

[00:04:15]It's exactly the same challenge as in Africa.

[00:04:19]Africa: peace, prosperity, independence. And ultimately, the partnership will allow us to rebuild together a multilateral order which is so much so that the delusions affect us all and, in the end, perhaps a source of peace in life, to repeat what has just been said, peace will come, I believe very deeply, through the unity of the people, and I am very happy to see my brothers here, head of government, ministers present, and they took the trouble to tell you who is responsible for expressing my gratitude.

[00:05:21]But ultimately, it is a magnificent image because it is the image of the unique African continent, the Maghreb, and West Africa, a continent with a shared agenda.

[00:05:49][applause] Africa international un financial institutions and represented in the security council of the UN [applause] as we have been also fighting for the Africa to have a permanent seat at the20. We've been fighting for this for years and we've now made it a reality and we are fighting for an agenda along with the Secretary General. We've been talking about this for an African uh UN presence which will be all the best place to defend its own peace and and security operations and um particularly through uh it's um the UN missions. We hope to see all the way with all given to Africa to ensure its own sovereign security.

[00:06:50]The African continent needs better representation and Africa has the capacity to build on its strengths. So what we stand ready to do is assist you financing that with a reworked security arrangement which is respectful of the style of each African country but never eclipsing each nation's sovereignty. And I'm delighted to hear from your introductory remarks that we can build together a shared agenda to overcome the peace and security challenges that we facing continue to work together so that the uh the whole of the UN can move forward on a more equitable basis.

[00:07:40]Prosperity. Next. Uh with President Ruto, I was discussing this. I think that he is absolutely right when he's talking about the prosperity of the continent. It's clear. It's simple.

[00:07:53]No, what I'm offering is not to offer assistance. Those days are behind us.

[00:08:00]And uh we uh we know that there are budgetary challenges in in uh in some instances, security challenges in others. These are realities that we need to uh be realistic about but we need to rethink our north south relations and we need to look with lucidity at all of the crosscutting uh benefits that Africa can derive from its diaspora.

[00:08:27]Those who are working very hard in many of our countries and send remittances back home are another important lever that we must not overlook.

[00:08:39]But the main notion I want to focus on is co-investment. What is co-investment able to achieve? It means investing in human capital the young talents in Africa in a formal economy. One of the major difficulties here is that too much of our of the African economies that are underneath the tip of the iceberg as informal in. It's about time we brought them into the value chains and to structure your agricultural sector and your industrial sector in such a way that it will be stronger than ever. So that Africa will no longer be seen as a place for rare earths and other um resources to be extracted but rather to be a partner. So we're walking working towards a transformation of um of investment relations um investing in value chains, energy, sustainable development building on your strengths and your youth and your talent.

[00:09:45]table enable structure looking in AIC through agenda to have more strategic autonomy through this partnership and to reduce our dependencies, I would say, on the two major economies that want to capture everything.

[00:10:36]And so this agenda is shared. It is not France and Europe today that are mobilizing all of the rare earths, critical minerals or materials to completely capture the global market. Neither France nor Europe are coming to give you imperiums in terms of security solutions. Don't be mistaken again, that time is long past. The European agenda is in your interest to see you succeed in terms of prosperity and sovereignty because it is the same as ours. If you succeed in achieving sovereignty in artificial intelligence, agriculture, or industry, you help us succeed because you also offer us other solutions. Because you offer a future to your people, because you reduce forced migration which is also a problem for your countries because it drives away talent while at the same time providing a solution to Europe's agenda.

[00:11:31]And so I want there to be a collective awakening when we talk about all this, it's not a one-dimensional agenda of a Europe that would look at Africa as a continent that it should help.

[00:11:42]It is a partnership of equals because helping you succeed is the condition for our success.

[00:11:48]And we want to do it together in a respectful, clear-sighted and courageous way.

[00:11:55]That is why, in order to succeed, we wanted to mobilize the private sectors and yesterday, we announced, for the first time, thanks to this business forum, 23 billion euros of private investment, corporate investment, investment funds from the totally private sector in Africa.

[00:12:15]These 23 billion investments include 14 billion investments from French companies in African countries and 9 billion investments from African companies and business leaders on the continent.

[00:12:28]This achievement in itself is a real shock that illustrates the strength of what I am telling you and the fact that it is also a peak of action.

[00:12:39]All of this must come down to simple things, as the president said, a new paradigm of growth.

[00:12:44]Countries that are developing a strategy for leveraging their resources, stronger agriculture and industry, but also a fiscal and budgetary policy that is more consistent with this agenda. Next, it's about succeeding in better mobilizing our international financing, the IMF, the World Bank, as we have done in recent years with special drawing rights, my dear Christina, together. the remobilization of these more than 100 billion special drawing rights towards Africa to better mobilize this money and a better leverage effect. And finally, as the President said, it is about building a real strategy at the African level to guarantee initial losses and to rely on the instrument now called Atidi based in Naerobi which will allow precisely and this is what we will commit to doing alongside you, France will enter into the capital of Atidi and we will mobilize alongside you the solutions so that Atidi can play its full role on the scale of the continent to bear the initial losses.

[00:13:49]This strategy is that of a new financial paradigm, one that allows us to fight for the prosperity of the continent and for its strategic autonomy.

[00:14:01]As for the rest, President Routau, and I will therefore cut my speech short, said it very well and in essence, it is the illustration, I would say physical and in action, of the partnership. I'm not going to repeat what he said, he said it better than I could have. I subscribe to these words and I endorse them.

[00:14:17]Today, we will be meeting in a moment to discuss these growth issues. We will meet to discuss financial architecture. We will then discuss peace solutions and we will endorse a series of texts that will illustrate this agenda that I have just described.

[00:14:35]And then afterwards we will have the results of this Africa Forward summit with its results, its investments, our common commitments.

[00:14:44]Then, together with President Routau, we will go to the G7 on your behalf, deviating from the agenda we will have defined. And then throughout the year, we will go to the United Nations, the IMF, and the World Bank to promote this common agenda based on the mandate you will have given us.

[00:15:05]And that is why this summit is, in my view, also a summit through which we must define together a course of action that will allow us to meet contemporary challenges. That's all, my dear colleagues, my dear friends, I won't be any longer. In any case, I want to express my gratitude to President Routau for agreeing to host this Africward New Generation Summit. The gratitude I have towards you.

[00:15:34]My dear brothers and sisters and my dear friends, thank you for being here, for contributing your energy, and for telling you that France and with it Europe will stand alongside the African continent to build with it this agenda of peace, prosperity and independence to which it aspires, to do so with great respect and humility, to do so in service to this continent which is the youngest in the world and which last year again had the strongest growth in the world and which is not simply a continent of the future but already a continent of the present.

[00:16:17]Be proud of who you are. I am very proud to be by your side and to humbly try to build with you this agenda on which we will invest together and succeed together.

[00:16:33]Long live Africa and long live the friendship between Africa and France. Thank you so much.

[00:16:38][applause]