Transcript of the joint press conference of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, with Muhammadu Buhari, President of the federal Republic of Nigeria
MIL OSI Translation. Government of the Republic of France statements from French to English – Posted on July 04, 2018
Topic : International development and francophonie
Only the spoken version shall be authentic
Abuja presidential Palace, July 03, 2018
Mr. President.
Dear President, thank you very much for your hospitality, our exchange, our conversation and first I want to tell you how happy I am, personally, to return to Abuja. I lived there for several months, there was a little more than fifteen years and it is a pleasure to return to this country, which was very important to me and learned a lot of Africa.
Happy also because Nigeria is a large African country, a major emerging country and in the whole ECOWAS region, it is in fact the country structuring by demographics as by the economic weight that it represents, but also its cultural significance and the weight of Nollywood, film industry, your literature.
It is also, to my eyes, an important country given the vitality and credibility of democracy in nigeria. I say at the dawn of a new important election year for Nigeria. The world will have next year eyes on your country. The transition to 2015 had been exemplary and the peaceful nature and transparency of the upcoming election will be, also, crucial.
President BUHARI has said, we first talked, obviously, of security and of the security challenge that Nigeria, particularly in the North and North-East, is confronted, with the presence of Boko Haram and the fight against terrorism active and courageous that Nigeria has with its partners in Niger, Chad and Cameroon against this scourge.
Our cooperation in this area has increased significantly. We support the army of nigeria and its partners in the Lake Chad basin, notably in terms of intelligence and we call on the four countries concerned to go further in the effort of defense and stabilisation in this region.
I said to the President, the support of France is over. We will not hesitate, on all the manoeuvres where we are called to lend our support. We hope that the coordination with the G5 Sahel to be strengthened. We have also decided to invest in the area of stabilization in the region, to support, as we do in the G5 Sahel, the fight against terrorism efforts of stabilization.
In this respect, the French development Agency has significantly increased its engagement in Nigeria, and we come today to sign two important agreements : one of 75 million dollars for a project of water management in the city of Kano and a letter of intent on an urban transport project of us $ 200 million in Lagos.
We will also be launching tomorrow a funding program through the private sector, energy efficiency projects and renewable energy.
But my will and the heart of this visit, both today in Abuja, this evening and tomorrow in Lagos, it is to expand the partnership between our two countries. It is to expand on the topics of cultural, sporting and economic.
Tonight, I’ll be – I said to the Chairman at the Shrine in Lagos, with the will to announce the launch of the cultural Season Africa, that we are going to organize in 2020 in France. With also a willingness to recognize and give to see the vitality of the cultural scene in africa. Nigeria is – oh how – a showcase of advanced it. I mentioned the film, writing – I’ll see tomorrow Wole SOYINKA – the song, the various visual arts, fashion, we will have this evening – obviously the music – we have this evening a few examples of forts of this vitality. We will launch the cultural Season, we will also launch several partnerships in the field of film education and a few others.
It is this same vitality that I want to reinforce, through programs that we will develop human mobility, exchanges, student mobility, in accordance with the speech I held in Ouagadougou, and which seems to me extremely important to unite our youth.
This cultural agenda will be complemented by a sports agenda, we will take an initiative launched a few months ago in Paris, in the presence of the President WEAH, in connection with the NBA, which will allow it to install a partnership sport. I strongly believe in the development of the sport across Africa.
Also the strengthening of our economic ties. France in fact is not enough, it is through a few large companies, across traditional sectors. But I hope that we can develop an ecosystem that is much more alive, strong and in a much more powerful economically, between our two countries.
The beautiful project that we have signed, that In Vivo has signed at the moment is an example, which will help combat deforestation and meet some of the challenges nigerians.
We will launch tomorrow an economic forum franco-nigerian that will bring together women and men of business, and other. I hope that with the President, BUHARI, we can institutionalize this format, to accompany these initiatives and develop more than we do today, the economic links between our two countries.
Finally, we’ll have tomorrow to inaugurate also the new Alliance française in Lagos, which will be the backbone of this presence, both cultural and economic of France.
This is the meaning of this visit : recall our commitment to the safe plan, but also give the bilateral relationship a new dimension-cultural, economic, sports, mobility and want to see in Nigeria is a big emerging power and a country which plays, of course, the fate of nearly 200 million Africans, but also the fate of an entire region. It is for this reason that I hope that France will be by your side even more invested.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is a translation. Please accept our apologies should the grammar and/or sentence structure is not be perfect.