French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Ivory Coast yesterday to celebrate Christmas with French troops, coinciding with a push by Paris to strengthen regional ties against militants.
Away from the protest strikes gripping France, Macron was to share a dinner cooked by his personal chef with around 1,000 troops at the military base in Port-Bouet, near Abidjan’s airport.
Macron did not make any declarations on the airport tarmac where he and his wife Brigitte were greeted by his Ivorian counterpart Alassane Ouattara before meeting local chiefs. The  insurgency in several poor Sahel nations will be a top item on Macron’s agenda in 48-hour stay.
“He is a young president who works a lot for African countries,” said M’Bollo Koka Denis, traditional chief from Abobo, a working-class district of Abidjan.”This visit should bring us security, as we’ve been threatened for a while now.”
Dining in a huge tent installed on a football pitch, guests were to tuck into traditional French Christmas fare, including foie gras, poultry from the Landes region served with morel mushrooms, regional French cheeses, chocolate cake and mandarines from Corsica.
He was to meet several French soldiers who took part in November in an anti-terrorist operation in Mali, where 13 men lost their lives.Tomorrow, Macron will pay a flying visit for talks with President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger, where militant attacks are frequent, as in both neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.
The leaders of five Sahel nations are due to attend a summit in Paris on January 13. Macron spent Christmas in 2017 with troops deployed to Niger and went last year to Chad.
The men in Ivory Coast serve as a support force in anti-militant operations and constitute the largest French contingent in Africa after the one in Djibouti on the northeastern side of the continent.
Today, Macron and Ouattara will visit an International Counter-Terrorism Academy launched by the two countries near Abidjan in October 2018.