The next Francophonie Summit will be held in Paris and Villers-Cotterêts on October 4 and 5. This is the first time in 33 years that France has hosted this major event. The theme of this year’s Summit is “Create, innovate and undertake in French” and will highlight the challenges and opportunities related to innovation and entrepreneurship in French. A press conference held Tuesday at the headquarters of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) was an opportunity to unveil the key themes of this event of recognized magnitude.
France will host the 19th Francophonie Summit, also known as the Villers-Cotterêts Summit, on October 4 and 5, 2024. This major event is of major diplomatic, economic and cultural importance. For France, it is one of the highlights of 2024, alongside the 80th anniversary of the Normandy and Provence landings, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. “The theme of this Summit is “Creating, innovating and undertaking in French”, and we will be keen to demonstrate the opportunities of all kinds offered by the French-speaking world, particularly for the benefit of young people,” says the OIF.
A summit with multiple challenges
The choice of the theme “create, innovate, undertake”, made by President Emmanuel Macron and the Secretary General of the OIF, Louise Mushikiwabo, stems from a desire to address young people directly, because the Francophonie is a very young space, specifies the spokesperson for the SG of the Francophonie, Oria Vande Wegh, specifying that the small novelty this year will be the presence of young people alongside the Heads of State. “The key moment of this Summit will really be the plenary session in the form of a round table, where the Heads of State will be invited to discuss the theme together and make recommendations. This was tested at the Djerba Summit in Tunisia in 2022, and will be on the agenda again for the Heads of State this year, with the addition of young people around the table, because it seemed important to President Macron and the Secretary General of the OIF to talk about young people, but with young people.”she explained.
For his part, the Secretary General of the Francophonie Summit, François Vandeville, said that the challenges of this 19th Francophonie Summit “are large and of several orders”These issues, he explains, mainly have a scope:
linguistic: we must support the dynamism of the French-speaking population, which will increase from 321 million inhabitants today to 715 million inhabitants by 2050. This requires significant support for teaching of and in French;
• geopolitics: in the face of the fragmentation of the world, the Francophonie is a unique forum for dialogue, present on five continents, based on a shared language and values: it must be made to grow in strength;
• digital: as artificial intelligence progresses in our societies, we must ensure that the digital space reflects linguistic and cultural diversity, that algorithms allow for visibility and discoverability;
• economic: French-speaking states trade more and offer better employment prospects in countries that share a language, or even a common legal culture.
