Macron hosts Francophone leaders in bid to boost French clout

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00:00French President Emmanuel Macron hosting dozens of leaders of French-speaking countries for a summit

00:06he hopes will boost French influence in a world beset by crises, in particular Africa.

00:12The leaders gathering this Friday and Saturday for what's called the Francophonie Summit,

00:16the first time the event has been held in France for 33 years. Kara Scarlett reports.

00:22It's the first time in 33 years that France has hosted the international organization of the

00:33French-speaking world for this summit, which has the theme Create, Innovate and Undertake in French.

00:39And even while this summit's really about fostering a democracy in member countries,

00:44it's playing out amid a background of conflict and tensions. Three Sahel countries, Mali,

00:50Burkina Faso and Niger were not invited, suspended from the organization as relations broke down with

00:55former colonial leader France after military coup d'etat. Guinea, by contrast, was reintegrated

01:03into the organization even as it's ruled by a military junta for the past three years.

01:09It's also playing out amid a number of African continent conflicts, particularly in the eastern

01:18region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the armed conflict that's playing out there.

01:22Macron on the sidelines of this summit met with Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president,

01:27this morning and will meet with his Rwandan counterpart on Saturday. But another conflict

01:32that's set to be at the heart of these discussions is that in Lebanon, as Israel's war spilled over

01:39into the country recently, that will be the subject of a roundtable on Saturday. But Friday's talks

01:45are set to center around technology and how to make the French language

01:48give it a powerful place in the world of tech, especially in the age of AI.

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