Kenya and France signed eleven bilateral agreements on Sunday as President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Nairobi for the Africa Forward Summit 2026, a high-profile gathering co-hosted by Kenya and France and designed to reframe France’s engagement with the African continent. The agreements, spanning sectors from nuclear energy to infrastructure and digital technology, represent the most concrete output of a diplomatic reset that Paris has been pursuing since Macron’s earlier summits signalled a new direction in Franco-African relations.
The standout deal is an ambitious plan for a nuclear energy plant in Kenya — a project that, if realised, would mark a significant diversification in Kenya’s power generation mix and signal strong confidence in French technology partnerships. Other agreements cover investments in renewable energy, transportation infrastructure, healthcare and education. The summit brought together heads of state, senior government ministers, business leaders and innovators from across the continent for two days of discussions on what both Kenya and France are calling a new chapter in Africa-France cooperation.
Macron opened the summit with a clear message: Europe cannot afford to be absent from Africa’s growth story. In a speech that acknowledged France’s colonial history while framing the new partnership in forward-looking terms, the French President said the continent’s young population and expanding middle class represented a strategic opportunity that Europe needed to embrace rather than cede to other global powers. Africa is not a market we need to access — it is a partner we need to build with, Macron said at the opening session.
President William Ruto, speaking at the same event, said Kenya viewed the summit as a platform to bring continental perspectives into the G7 discussion, noting that African nations wanted to shape the frameworks that governed global investment and technology transfer rather than simply react to them. The Kenya-France axis at the summit was clearly designed to present a joint front on issues from debt sustainability to climate finance.
The summit also attracted over 100 civil society organisations from across Africa, which tabled more than 60 proposals on governance reforms, transparency in investment deals and equitable infrastructure development. While the formal summit proceedings produced concrete investment commitments, the civil society track pressed for guarantees that new projects would benefit local communities and that there would be enforceable standards on labour rights and environmental impact.
Not all reactions were positive. Opposition leaders in Kenya raised questions about why Kenya was chosen as the host for what is effectively a France-Africa summit, arguing that the decision reflected divisions among Francophone nations rather than any special status for Nairobi. Critics also questioned whether the promised investments would translate into tangible benefits for ordinary Kenyans, particularly given the large infrastructure deals that have sometimes been criticised as favouring foreign contractors over local firms.
For France, the summit is part of a deliberate strategy to reframe its African engagement after years of declining influence in a continent where China, Turkey, the Gulf states and others have been making deep inroads. The eleven agreements signed in Nairobi are a tangible down payment on that ambition — but whether the momentum carries beyond the summit photo opportunities remains to be seen.