Paris, 24 Feb. French President Emmanuel Macron will travel next week to Gabon, Angola, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, four countries in the Congo Basin where he will maintain an ecological, economic and diplomatic agenda, with the growing influence of China. and Russia in Africa.
One of the essential points of the trip will be to participate in the International Summit on Forests which will take place on March 1 and 2 in Libreville, under Gabonese and French sponsorship, and which aims to promote the reduction of deforestation and the search for concrete and operational to preserve these spaces of diversity, indicated the Elysée.
The Congo basin is, with the Amazon, the lung of the planet, with 220 million hectares.
The French president will also hold bilateral talks with Gabonese leaders, before traveling to Angola on March 2, where agricultural projects will be at the center of his agenda.
Macron will travel to Brazzaville the same day, to dedicate the last two dates of his African tour to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Educational and cultural cooperation will be one of the key elements of this visit to Kinshasa, where the tensions that the country is experiencing in the East, with the resurgence of the M23 guerrillas, will also be discussed.
The president will deliver a speech at the Elysée on Monday in which he will explain the changes that Paris has planned in its military posture in Africa, which mainly affect the countries of the west coast but also others such as Gabon, where France has a large detachment.
France had to leave several African countries and the Élysée assured that its new system will be less visible, in line with the new policy of cooperation that France wants to deploy in Africa, “in the second line”.
The trip will also make it possible to feel the growing influence of China and Russia on the continent, which has manifested itself in the increasing rejection by African countries of the resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, adopted in an overwhelming majority in the General Assembly. of ONU.