President William Ruto will fly out to France on Monday, January 23, where he is expected to meet France's President Emmanuel Macron during a three-day visit to France and Senegal.
In a press statement dated Monday, January 23, the Executive Office of the President stated that the Head of State would be discussing key development projects with the President of France.
Additionally, the president will discuss matters of Regional peace and security with the President of France before traveling to Dakar in Senegal.
The statement further notes that Ruto will be a keynote speaker at a summit in Dakar on food, sovereignty, and resilience.
"It is an appropriate forum for Heads of State and other partners to discuss how to exploit Africa's agricultural potential and the plans and programmes that will help scale up production.
"It will also be an opportunity for leaders in the continent to find ways through which Africa can meet the rising cost of food," the statement read in part.
The summit, organised by the Africa Development Bank, comes at a time when Africa is facing serious food security challenges.
The trip will be Ruto’s first official trip of 2023, after his December 2022, trip to the United States where he secured several deals including a major partnership in his efforts to bring peace to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
This is the first international trip that the President has made since the turn of the year and the eleventh since his inauguration in September 2022.
Previously, the President has toured Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Egypt on the African continent.
The President has also toured South Korea in a State visit in November, 2022.
However, this is the second trip that the President is making to Europe considering that his first trip since inauguration was to the United Kingdom while attending the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
The trip to the UK was closely followed by a trip to the United States where the President was attending the Seventy-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly between September 20 and September 24, 2022.
Ruto would later return to the United States in December 2022, where he attended the United States–Africa Leaders Summit 2022 that was held in Washington D.C.
In December 14, 2022, a tax and governance expert Sam Okumu speaking to kenyans.co.ke stated that Ruto's foreign trips would jeopardize his efforts to cut the budget by Ksh300 billion, as promised during a parliamentary sitting.
Ruto's trip comes just hours after Azimio Party Leader Raila Odinga arrived from a work trip in South Africa.
