The 18th session of the Francophone Summit kicked off in Tunisia, with the participation of about 90 delegations and 31 state leaders, led by French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Tunisian President Kais Saied said that the theme chosen for this summit is "digitization", and the aim is for it to be a pillar of joint development and cooperation in the Francophone space.

For two days, the participants will discuss the topic of "the digital field as an engine for development", as well as international files related specifically to the Russian war in Ukraine.

Several African countries express their dissatisfaction with the lack of solidarity of Western countries with the African continent, which is facing multiple and continuous crises, while their attention was focused on helping Ukraine.

The Tunisian president began receiving official delegations since the morning, accompanied by Louise Mushikiwabo, Secretary General of the International Organization of La Francophonie.

The meeting comes with the continuation of the climate summit in Egypt and the G20 meeting in Indonesia, whose agenda was dominated by the war in Ukraine.

The country that holds observer status in the La Francophonie.

For his part, the French President stressed, during his meeting with a group of young people on the sidelines of the summit, that the Francophone should be a "living space and a space for steadfastness," and "not be an institutional space."

The Francophonie - which has 88 members, including Tunisia - celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its founding.

Tunisia was one of the founding countries of the organization in 1970, along with Senegal, Nigeria and Cambodia.

Non-Francophonie countries, such as Moldova, the UAE and Serbia, also participate in the summit.

The Francophone space includes 321 million French speakers, and their number is expected to double at the end of 2050 thanks to the spread of the French language on the African continent.

It is expected that the Secretary-General of the International Organization of Rwanda Louise Mushikiwabo will be re-elected to head the organization for 4 new years, and she is the only candidate for this position.

The Secretary-General stressed that the organization is "more important than ever", in response to the escalating criticism directed at it, including what Senegalese writer Amadou Lamine Sall wrote in an article, when he said that the Francophonie is "not seen" and "not heard" on the international scale. .

Fears for democracy

Canadian officials speak of "concerns" about "democratic participation" in Tunisia since President Saeed decided on July 25 to monopolize the authorities in the country, stressing that Canada will raise this issue during summit meetings.

However, in conjunction with the summit, Tunisia is experiencing an acute political crisis, and demonstrators were prevented from reaching the island of Djerba, the venue for the summit, to protest the continued loss of irregular migrants at sea since the end of last September, and the police forces repelled them using tear gas.

Tunisia is hosting the meeting after it was postponed twice: first in 2020 due to Covid-19, and then in the fall of 2021 after the measures taken by Saied and are widely seen as ending a pioneering democratic experiment in the Arab world.

The political opposition in the country - led by the Ennahda Party - believes that what Saeed did was a "coup against the revolution," while the president asserts that his decisions are "correcting the course of the revolution."