French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot began a two-day visit to the Central African Republic on Thursday, where he is scheduled to meet on Friday with President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, marking the first high-level French visit in seven years, the French Foreign Ministry announced.
The trip is part of efforts to revive bilateral relations, which had deteriorated in recent years amid growing Russian influence, a rapprochement initiated in April 2024 by Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Touadéra.
France had not sent a senior official to this Central African country of 5.3 million people since Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian visited in November 2018, two years after Touadéra came to power.
During his visit, Barrot is also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Félix Molouan and his counterpart Sylvie Notéfé, and to visit the European training mission EUTM, which supports the Central African armed forces, as well as MINUSCA, the United Nations peacekeeping force.
Historically influential and militarily present since independence in 1960, France has gradually lost influence in this resource-rich country to Russia and its paramilitary group Wagner, which benefit from lucrative contracts in gold, diamond, and timber exploitation.
President Touadéra, returning from a week-long visit to Moscow, where he met Vladimir Putin, was re-elected in January for a third term with 77.9% of the vote in an election disputed by the opposition. In 2023, he oversaw the adoption of a new constitution allowing him to extend his time in power.
The visit also comes shortly after the release of a French humanitarian worker employed by Médecins Sans Frontières, who was arrested on March 4 in the southern part of the country near the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) border, accused of activities aimed at destabilizing the country.