French President, François Hollande has concluded discussion with top 10 entrepreneurs across Middle East, Europe and Africa in Paris on ways of promoting trade relations with Europe.
The dialogue is coming on the heels of serious collapse in the volume of trade relationship between African continent and France.
A statement issued by the Dangote Group of Companies said, “While foreign investments into the African continent went from $15bn in the year 2000 to $118bn in 2014, trade between France and Africa went down from 10.1 per cent in 2000 to 5.9 per cent in 2015”.
However, in order to correct the trend, Hollande gathered big industrialist representatives for a private meeting. Amongst them was Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa, Othmane Ben Jelloun, the director of the Bmce-Bank group of Africa, Stephane Richard, the CEO of Orange Telephony group and Constant Nemale, the founder of the Media group Africa 24.
The dialogue is a front for the forth coming France-Africa summit in January 2017, in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
It was gathered that it is the wish of the French Head of State, Francois Hollande to make Dangote and select entrepreneurs a real strength for the construction of new economic partnership between Europe and Africa.
Responding on the development, Dangote said, “The meeting was very fruitful. We emphasised the need for partnerships, business amongst ourselves and transfer of technology. There is need for investments both in Africa and France. The more you invest, the more you remove terrorism and all the other security challenges. Public-private partnership is very important because it will bring lots of opportunities for Africa and France. It is a very vast market, we can sell our products here and they can as well sell theirs in our respective countries and this can lead to a very good transformational activity.”
