The Africa Forward summit comes amid France’s fading ties with its former African colonies, as Kenya seeks greater trade.

French President Emmanuel Macron has announced 23 billion euros ($27bn) of investment during the Africa Forward summit in Kenya.

Macron said on Monday that Africa and France had a “partnership of equals” with common objectives, as he announced 14 billion euros ($16.4bn) of investments in private and public funds from French companies, and 9 billion euros ($10.5bn) from African ones, on energy transition, agriculture and artificial intelligence (AI).

These investments would create 250,000 jobs in France and Africa, Macron said at the two-day summit – France’s first in an English-speaking African country – which started on Monday.

“We are not simply here to come and invest on the African continent alongside you – we need great African business leaders to come and invest in France,” he told the heads of state and leaders of more than 30 African nations, including Francophone countries, at Nairobi’s convention centre.

“And that too is what underpins this relationship, now entirely free of hang-ups,” Macron said.

The summit is seen as an attempt by France to strengthen its ties with English-speaking African countries amid waning ties with its former colonies on the continent.

Africa’s richest man, Nigerian industrialist Aliko Dangote, was in attendance, as were executives from leading French firms TotalEnergies and Orange.

The French shipping group CMA CGM committed an investment of 700 million euros ($8.2m) to modernise a terminal at the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

Many have observed that the summit comes as France’s influence in Africa has faded, with French forces recently forced to withdraw from former colonies. Macron aims to renew France’s engagement with the African continent, which he said he views as a “whole”, while positioning Europe as a more reliable trade partner than China or the United States.

In advance of the summit, Macron told Paris-based magazine The Africa Report that colonialism could no longer be blamed for all of Africa’s challenges. “We must not exonerate from all responsibility the seven decades that followed independence,” he said, calling on African leaders to improve governance.

Speaking at the summit, Macron also said the process of returning African artworks looted during the colonial era had become “unstoppable”. The French parliament last week passed a law paving the way for the government to return looted African cultural artefacts.

At a time when many African nations, particularly in the Sahel region, are reducing or expelling foreign military forces, Kenya is hosting a growing international military presence. A month before the summit, about 800 French soldiers arrived in Kenya on a navy ship.

Kenyan President William Ruto praised his relationship with France, saying, “We should no longer think in terms of aid and loans, but rather in terms of investment and what Africa has to offer.”

One killed and four others wounded in attacks on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, local administration chief says.

Russia and Ukraine have resumed air attacks after a United States-brokered three-day truce expired, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying more than 200 drones were used to attack Ukraine overnight.

Russian aerial attacks across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday morning killed at least one person and injured four others, according to regional administration chief Oleksandr Ganzha.

Russian drones also hit energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, causing outages, and struck residential buildings and a kindergarten in the Kyiv region, according to local authorities. Russia also carried out attacks on the regions of Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy and Chernihiv, according to authorities.

More than 200 long-range drones were used in the wave of attacks, Zelenskyy said. “Russia itself chose to end the partial silence that had lasted for several days,” he said in a post on X.

Russia’s military, meanwhile, said its defences downed 27 Ukrainian drones over the regions of Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov.

The exchange of aerial attacks came after the expiry of a 72-hour truce announced by US President Donald Trump on Friday, which he said he hoped would mark “the beginning of the end” of Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine.

The May 9-11 truce overlapped with Russia’s Victory Day, which celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war.

But even before it expired, both sides accused each other of violating the truce by attacking civilians.

Zelenskyy said Russia was neither observing the truce nor “even particularly trying to”, adding there had been no calm in front-line areas despite a lull in large-scale attacks.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence accused Ukraine of committing more than 1,000 ceasefire violations. It said Ukrainian forces attacked civilian targets in several Russian regions and carried out strikes against Russian military positions on the front line.

Russia’s military had “responded in kind” to the ceasefire violations, according to the Defence Ministry.

US-backed negotiations on ending the Russia-Ukraine war have made little headway and have been largely sidelined by the crisis in the Middle East amid the US-Israel war on Iran. Trump’s ceasefire announcement had raised some hope that US-led talks to end Russia’s invasion could be resumed.

On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested for the first time that the Ukraine war may be “coming to an end” and expressed a willingness to meet Zelenskyy in Moscow or a neutral country once an agreement to end the war is finalised. He also accused the “arrogant” West of risking a global conflict, warning that Russia’s “strategic forces” are combat-ready.

United States President Donald Trump’s visit to China this week will mark his seventh face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The visit will also be the first trip by a US leader to China since 2017.

Trump and Xi’s three-day summit, which kicks off on Wednesday, is expected to focus on the US-Israel war on Iran, trade, and the status of Taiwan, among other issues.

Here’s a rundown of the past meetings between the leaders of the world’s two most powerful nations:

April 2017 in Palm Beach, US

The two first met at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago resort on April 6, 2017, just a few months into his first term.

At the time of their meeting, Trump was coming off a presidential campaign that had heavily criticised China’s trade practices and their impact on the US economy.

Trump had also angered China by accepting a congratulatory phone call from then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, breaking decades of diplomatic precedent set in 1979 when Washington cut off relations with Taipei.

During their Mar-a-Lago meeting, Trump appeared to build a personal rapport with Xi and said the two sides had made “tremendous progress” towards improving US-China relations.

The summit was largely overshadowed, however, by Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes on Syria, then led by Beijing-backed Bashar al-Assad, during Xi’s visit.

July 2017 in Hamburg, Germany

Xi and Trump met on the sidelines of the G20 summit on July 8, 2017, beginning a pattern of engagement that would see the leaders repeatedly cross paths at major international gatherings.

Their meeting focused heavily on North Korea’s nuclear programme and economic ties.

A month later, the Trump Administration fired its first shot in the US-China trade war by launching an investigation into alleged theft of US intellectual property.

By invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the White House would lay the groundwork to impose punitive tariffs on China.

November 2017 in Beijing, China

Trump landed in China on November 8, 2017 for a three-day visit, joined by a delegation of American CEOs and business leaders.

Trump’s itinerary included watching a Peking opera with Xi and his wife, visits to the Forbidden City and Palace Museum, a formal reception at the Great Hall of the People, a state banquet, and, finally, a private meeting with the Chinese leader.

Trump left China touting $250m in “business deals” spanning energy, agriculture, and technology, although some of the agreements were tentative or covered projects already under way.

The summit’s positive tone did not stop Trump from imposing tariffs on China a few months later.

December 2018 in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Trump and Xi held a dinner on December 1, 2018, on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

Months earlier, the Trump administration had imposed tariffs on $250bn worth of Chinese goods and banned US government agencies from using Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE, prompting Beijing to hit back with tariffs on $110bn worth of US goods.

Despite the tensions, the White House hailed the meeting as “highly successful”, and the sides agreed to begin negotiations on outstanding issues, including intellectual property protection and cybertheft.

June 2019 in Osaka, Japan

Trump and Xi came face-to-face at the G20 summit on June 29, 2019.

During their talks, the leaders agreed to a host of measures to de-escalate their rivalry, including a halt to new US tariffs, more open-ended trade negotiations, an easing of restrictions on Huawei, and a Chinese commitment to buy more US agricultural exports.

The US and China would months later sign a “phase one” trade deal, under which Washington agreed to roll back a number of tariffs and Beijing pledged to buy $200bn worth of US goods and services.

China ultimately did not meet its purchase commitments during the required timeframe, which overlapped with the collapse of global trade due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

October 2025 in Busan, South Korea

Trump and Xi held their first meeting in six years on the sidelines of the 2025 APEC summit on October 30, 2025.

The leaders met to extend a truce in a spiralling tariff war that briefly saw the US and China impose duties of 145 percent and 125 percent, respectively.

Despite the trade truce, the Trump administration imposed sector-specific tariffs on China and restrictions on Chinese technology exports in the run-up to the summit, while Beijing tightened export controls on rare earth minerals.

After their talks, Trump and Xi announced a one-year pause in their trade war.

Among other measures, the US eased its tariffs, while China agreed to drop some of its export restrictions on rare earths and resume purchases of US agricultural exports.