President of France, Emmanuel Macron announced €23 billion in investment for Africa during a major summit on the continent’s future held in Kenya on Monday.

France has gathered dozens of heads of state and business leaders for the two-day Africa Forward summit in Nairobi, which aims to reset and strengthen France’s relationship with Africa following years of strained relations with several of its former colonies.

The investment package announced by Macron includes €14 billion from French public and private sources and a further €9 billion from African investors, France 24 reports.

The funding will target sectors such as energy transition, digital technology and AI, the maritime economy, and agriculture.

According to Macron, the initiative is expected to generate around 250,000 direct jobs across both France and Africa.

“We are not simply here to come and invest on the African continent alongside you -- we need the great African business leaders to come and invest in France,” he said.

“And that too is what underpins this relationship, now entirely free of hang-ups,” he added.

Ahead of the summit, Emmanuel Macron told The Africa Report that colonial history can no longer be used as an explanation for all of Africa’s current challenges.

“We must not exonerate from all responsibility the seven decades that followed independence,” he said, calling on African leaders to improve governance.

In his address at the summit, Macron said that the restitution of African artworks taken during the colonial era had become “unstoppable.”

Last week, the French parliament also approved legislation enabling the return of looted African cultural artefacts.

Furthermore, Macron has increasingly tried to position Europe as a more dependable trading partner compared with China and the United States.

“Europe defends the international order, effective multilateralism, the rule of law, free and open trade,” he said.

On critical minerals and rare earths, he argued that China follows what he described as a “predatory logic,” carrying out processing domestically and thereby creating “dependencies with the rest of the world.”

He also highlighted the need to reform international financial systems, including the creation of financial guarantee mechanisms designed to unlock greater private investment.

“There is no reason today for there to be so little private investment coming into a continent as full of energy and youth as yours,” he said during the summit.