Biya-Macron : High-level Talks At Élysée Palace

Bilateral relations between Cameroon and one of its long-standing partners – France, witnessed fresh impetus on Friday July 26, 2024 following top-level discussions between leaders of the two countries. Presidents Paul Biya of Cameroon and Emmanuel Macron of France held close to an hour in-camera discussions at the French Presidency, the Élysée Palace in Paris. This was on the side-lines of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games which the French Republic is hosting in its capital, Paris, and for which President Emmanuel Macron and the President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, duly invited President Paul Biya for its official opening ceremony.  
Although nothing filtered to the press from the Biya-Macron Paris tête-à-tête, it would be preposterous to imagine that relations between the two friendly countries were not at the centre of the top-level discussions. Cameroon and France being birds of a feather who have been flocking together for over six decades now. In effect, history holds that the two countries, members of several international organisations, established diplomatic relations at the ambassador level in the 1960.The ties have grown in depth and breadth over the years .
Friday’s tête-à-tête between the host President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, and his Cameroon peer, Paul Biya, had several coincidences. It came slightly over a year after the two leaders met, still in Paris, in June 2023 during the Summit on New Global Financing Impact and even more, exactly two years after a similar tête-à-tête in Cameroon’s State House in Yaounde on July 26, 2022. President Emmanuel Macron then chose to begin his  first international tour to Africa since the start of his second mandate with Cameroon.
Worth recalling is the fact that in a press declaration after the Yaounde Biya-Macron tête-à-tête, the two leaders said they agreed to revive and diversify their strategic partnership on key sectors such as agriculture, security in the Gulf of Guinea, industrial and infrastructural development, good governance, digital economy and education. Discussions which gave the Cameroon and French Heads of State the opportunity to once a...