Emmanuel Macron receives on Friday March 19 at the Elysee a dozen personalities involved in the promotion of the Francophonie, on the eve of the Day of the Francophonie on Saturday, said the presidency.
This meeting aims to
“kick off”
the preparation of the future Francophonie Summit scheduled for the island of Djerba, in Tunisia, on November 20 and 21, 2021. It will be the first Francophonie summit organized. by a Maghreb country.
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Among those present on Friday will be the Secretary General of the International Organization of La Francophonie Louise Mushikiwabo, the novelist Leïla Slimani, Emmanuel Macron's personal representative for the Francophonie or even the academician Erik Orsenna.
On March 20, 2018 Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted to develop the French language and multilingualism and move the center of gravity of the French-speaking world to West Africa, where the largest number of French-speaking speakers are found.
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The Francophonie week 2021 took place largely online, for health reasons, with the launch in particular of the “Dictionary of Francophones”, an online participatory dictionary ordered by Emmanuel Macron and already with more than 600,000 terms and expressions.
Emmanuel Macron's flagship project for the Francophonie is the restoration of François I's castle in Villers-Cotterêts, which is due to become in 2022-2023 a place of exhibitions and shows, a training center and an artists' residence and companies specializing in linguistics.
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This face-to-face meeting comes on the eve of new restrictions in Île-de-France announced Thursday to avoid regroupings and fight against a resurgence of the epidemic.
