Africa-France Summit 2020: how Bordeaux is preparing for the event

Text by: Bruno Faure Follow

On June 4, 5 and 6, 2020, the Africa-France summit will be held in Bordeaux (southwest of France) on the theme: "Changing cities and territories to change life". What should we expect from it? How is the Gironde capital mobilized? Interview with the co-president of the summit, Pierre de Gaëtan Njikam.

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Pierre de Gaëtan Njikam is also deputy mayor of Bordeaux in charge of partnerships with Africa and the Francophonie.

RFI: The Africa-France summit in Bordeaux will be held in less than five months, where are we in the preparation?

Pierre de Gaëtan Njikam : We want this summit to be one of solutions, both French and African. The economic actors of the Bordeaux region and New Aquitaine are mobilizing to participate in the " City of solutions " - a vast space for exhibition and entrepreneurial meetings - which will be a central moment of this summit and of its success. It is also the effort that our partner organizations, the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Bordeaux-Africa Business Club of the Chamber of Commerce. All of our major companies in the region attract the participation of either their partners, their counterparts or their contacts in Africa. We undertook with Stéphanie Rivoal, the ambassador in charge of this summit, a tour of the main African capitals to organize, with the employers and the local African and French-speaking Chambers of Commerce, mobilization sessions with the help of economic missions and Business France among others.

Are a number of events already launched?

In parallel to this time of mobilization of Bordeaux, French and African companies, there is also the declination of a dynamic “ Bordeaux in unison ” from the summit. It is the implementation of a number of events of an economic, cultural, intellectual and social nature that will allow French and Bordeaux civil society to participate in this event, to reclaim it. It must be a summit for the actors of change and of the “sustainable city”.

Not everyone in Africa is directly affected by the challenges of the “sustainable city”. There are also many Africans who are concerned above all with the things of daily life, safety first.

Of course. At the heart of the themes that are at the heart of the “City of solutions” of this summit, there is above all the desire to allow the majority of the population to access essential services: how to access security, how to live, how to eat, where and how to live, how to connect, where and how to speak, how to train more young people, how to support more young people towards employment?

What are the existing links between Bordeaux and Africa?

Bordeaux has an exemplary relationship with the African continent through history of course, but above all also through all the dynamics of partnership that are developing, whether at university level, at the level of Chambers of Commerce, at level of associations, at the level of the port of Bordeaux, at the level of CHU (university hospital center), of all the actors of the cultural, social, economic world, and also at the level of local communities. So it is a question of putting forward all that the Bordeaux and neo-Aquitaine territory can bring to the renovation of a relationship which can no longer be simply a relationship from above, but above all a relationship of territories.

A painful relationship too, if we go back very far in history with the slave trade.

Of course. As Alain Juppé said a few months ago: “ It is both a History with its share of darkness, but today it is above all a History with its share of light. And we must hope, we are even certain, that the Africa-France summit focused on the challenges of urban sustainability will be able to contribute precisely to show this new historic phase of the relationship between Bordeaux and Africa.

You talk about the relations between France and Africa. You will have to respond to those who say that it is still an event linked to Françafrique, at a time when anti-French sentiment in Africa is developing in certain places.

It's a bit of a happy paradox that this summit is being held in this somewhat muddled context. The goal of this summit is to determine how we change cities to change people's lives. This summit must be both inclusive and participative with a real desire to co-create value. There is a real desire for institutional actors, companies, local elected representatives, civil societies to share a new narrative in the relationship between Africa and France.

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