President William Ruto has called for a new era of partnership between Africa and France founded on sovereign equality, mutual respect, and shared responsibility rather than dependency and exploitation.
Speaking during the opening of the Africa Forward Summit at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) in Nairobi yesterday, which he co-chaired with French President Emmanuel Macron, President Ruto said the summit offers Africa and France an opportunity to forge a forward-looking relationship capable of driving economic transformation and shared prosperity.
“The times before us demand stronger cooperation, renewed multilateralism, and partnerships grounded not in hierarchy, but in sovereign equality, mutual respect, and shared responsibility,” President Ruto said.
He stressed that the partnership should not be anchored on aid, charity, extraction, or dependency, but on mutually beneficial investment and value creation.
“What Africa requires is not charity, but investments; not extraction, but value creation; not dependency, but mutually beneficial partnerships capable of unlocking shared prosperity,” he stated.
The summit brought together 24 Heads of State, five Prime Ministers, four Vice Presidents, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, and African Union Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, among other global leaders.
President Ruto outlined Africa’s development priorities, including domestic resource mobilisation, reform of the international financial architecture, expansion of transport and logistics infrastructure, green industrialisation, energy transition, and youth empowerment through innovation and artificial intelligence.
He said Africa possesses more than $4 trillion in long-term domestic savings, including pension and insurance assets and central bank reserves, which could be harnessed to finance the continent’s transformation.
“The era in which Africa’s development was principally framed through aid, dependency, and unsustainable borrowing must give way to a new paradigm grounded in investment, innovation, domestic resource mobilisation, and strategic partnerships built on sovereign equality and mutual benefit,” he said.
President Ruto noted that Kenya had already begun implementing this vision through the establishment of the National Infrastructure Fund, which he said has already mobilised about $1 billion towards strategic national projects.
The President also criticised what he termed as structural inequalities within the international financial system, arguing that African countries continue to face high borrowing costs and unfair risk assessments by global credit rating agencies.
He defended the establishment of the African Credit Rating Agency, saying it would help provide fairer and context-sensitive assessments of African economies and investment opportunities.
“This imbalance is neither sustainable nor just. It is one of the principal constraints on Africa’s ability to finance infrastructure, industrialisation, climate adaptation, and economic transformation at the scale required,” he said.
On infrastructure, President Ruto called for accelerated investment in transport corridors, railways, ports, roads, aviation, and digital connectivity to strengthen intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area.
“Africa cannot trade effectively with itself while its economies remain disconnected from one another,” he added.
He further urged African nations to invest heavily in youth skills development, innovation, entrepreneurship, and AI-driven transformation to position the continent as a globally competitive industrial hub powered by clean energy and modern technology.
On peace and security, President Ruto emphasised the need to strengthen African-led peace mechanisms while addressing poverty, unemployment, inequality, weak institutions, and climate vulnerability, which he described as key drivers of instability.
The Kenyan leader also renewed calls for reform of the United Nations Security Council, arguing that Africa remains unfairly excluded from global decision-making structures despite having 54 countries and a population of more than 1.5 billion people.
“No governance architecture can credibly claim to be democratic, representative, just or fit for purpose while Africa remains absent from the table where the world’s most consequential decisions are made,” he said.
President Macron echoed Ruto’s sentiments, saying the renewed partnership between Africa and France would be built on “respect, courage, and shared ambitions.”
“Your success is our success,” the French President said, noting that France had committed billions of pounds in investments across Africa through both French companies and African enterprises.
He added that Europe and Africa share common aspirations for peace, prosperity, sovereignty, and fair-trade relations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised Africa for taking a leading role in addressing global challenges such as climate action and reforms of the international financial system.
He described the continued exclusion of Africa from permanent membership in the UN Security Council as “a century-old injustice.”
“Without the voice, representation, and decision-making power Africa deserves inside international financial institutions, it is not Africa that loses; it is the world that loses,” Guterres said.
Among leaders who attended the summit were Presidents Paul Kagame, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Hakainde Hichilema, John Dramani Mahama, and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, among other African leaders.
