At the Élysée Palace on Thursday, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama and French President Emmanuel Macron engaged in lengthy bilateral discussions about security cooperation, economic growth, and regional stability as part of the 2025 Paris Peace Forum.
President Macron began the meeting with a sombre statement, expressing his condolences for the untimely death of Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, the former First Lady of Ghana.
Both leaders commended the Paris Peace Initiative and the improvement in Ghana-France ties.
The appeal for French support to fight piracy in Ghana’s territorial seas was a major topic of discussion. President Mahama asked for assistance in defending Ghana’s maritime integrity against the growing threat of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
The two presidents also talked about a French concessional loan that is pending parliamentary clearance for Ghana’s health sector. Noting Ghana’s better debt-to-GDP ratio, President Mahama urged his French counterpart to leverage his connections with the International Monetary Fund to get Ghana access to the French Development Bank facility.
In his role as the Champion of African Financial Institutions for the African Union (AU), President Mahama urged cooperation in renegotiating loan contracts for infrastructure projects with reduced interest rates.
He underlined the importance of improved road infrastructure to support intra-African trade as well as Ghana’s function as the location of the secretariat for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Ghana’s ambitious one-million-coders program, which has already enrolled 200,000 pupils, was emphasised by the Mahama. In order to enhance language instruction in Ghanaian schools, he asked for French assistance in training more French language instructors.
The African Union-European Union summit in Angola, the VivaTech Summit in Nairobi in May 2026, where Ghana could demonstrate its capabilities in digital innovation, and the June 2026 G7 summit, where France would push for greater assistance for Ghana, are just a few of the forthcoming opportunities for cooperation that President Macron mentioned.
Ghana is actively advocating for reparations for slavery, a topic President Mahama brought up. Despite pointing out that France had made slavery a crime, President Macron vowed to support the project and warned that the reparations debate should take into account the participation of other parties besides Western nations.
The leaders talked about the worsening security in the Sahel, especially the terrorist attacks in Mali and other Alliance of Sahel States (AES) nations.
President Macron pledged to continue French assistance for Ghana’s development program and praised Ghana’s economic changes as well as President Mahama’s subregional leadership.
Source: newsthemegh.com