The French president of State and the Elysee African Cell are currently preparing their programs for their official visit to the African continent in 2023.
What has been decided and what is still being discussed?
The first affected area is Central Africa, According to information from a digital journalistic resource, Emmanuel Macron will be visiting Libreville, Gabon for his summit in March or April without knowing the exact date.
Macron and his counterpart Ali Bongo Ondimba announced that they would take place on the sidelines of his COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh. This summit is dedicated to the environment, its conservation and its value enhancement
(CO2 tolerance and biodiversity).
the Presidency services are considering other steps in the Congo Basin region, the second lung and carbon sink of the planet, after Amazonia: in the RDC, where it would also be discussed the predominant role of diasporas in terms of culture, but also in Congo-Brazzaville. Macron should also take the opportunity to visit Angola, which is involved in mediation in the Great Lakes region, which is plagued by unrest generated by armed groups, including the M23 in eastern RDC. The opportunity to catch up on the 2021 visit was cancelled due to the Covid, the dominant feature of this phase will be agriculture.
In the second half of the year, the French president will travel to East Africa, on English-speaking soil. In Kenya, this is a certainty, and perhaps also in Tanzania and Zambia.
On the Maghreb side, finally, after Algeria (25-27 August 2022) and Tunisia (19-20 November, summit of the Francophonie), Emmanuel Macron will visit Morocco in January.
In a delicate context, relations between Paris and Rabat had cooled rather, especially after the announcement by the French government a year ago of the drastic reduction in the number of visas granted to Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians.