President William Ruto is in Évian-les-Bains, France, to attend the G7 Leader's Summit, where he joins Egypt as one of two African Heads of State invited to champion the continent's interests before leaders of the world's most advanced economies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) giants.

France, which holds this year's Presidency of the Group of Seven (G7) says it aims at ensuring that the forum is marked by "convergence and real action" to help fix major economic challenges and ongoing geopolitical crises.

According to the Centre for Strategic & International Studies, the France meeting of the elite club of advanced economies is the first since the start of U.S. and Israeli military action on Iran on 28 February and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a fallout that has triggered inflation fears across the world.

Alongside Kenya's Ruto, other non G7 leaders of invited are from Brazil, India and the Republic of Korea. They will be involved in meetings with G7 leaders: U.S. President Donald Trump, U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Canada's Mark Carney, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

Dr. Ruto is expected to "advance Africa’s priorities on financial reform, investment, climate action and the digital economy before leaders of the world’s major economies," stated State House spokesperson Hussein Mohamed on X.

The summit will provide an important platform for the President to push for Africa's case for reforms to the global financial systems, especially affordable access to capital and investment and "implementation of Africa Forward's Summit's recommendations on financial and credit reform.

Climate resilience and innovation

Additionally, Dr. Ruto is expected to call for enhanced ties between Africa and the world's leading economies in trade, infrastructure, energy, climate resilience and innovation.

Kenya appears to have taken over the position that South Africa has enjoyed for years being invited as a guest of G7 from the continent. In March, South Africa revealed that its invited to the summit was rescinded as its ties with the U.S, a key trading partner, worsened over its stand on the Israeli genocide in Gaza as well as its alleged mistreatment of white minority in the country.

This year, France has positioned the G7 meeting as a platform to create mutual trade ties that seek to ensure greater security of mineral supply chains.

"A limited number of players now hold a dominant position in this strategic sector, as they control the entire value chain, from extraction and refining to industrial processing. Against this backdrop, France wants to encourage the diversification of supply chains and strengthen critical mineral value chains from industrial, financing, trade, traceability and transparency, storage and recycling perspectives," a media update from the host nation reads in part.

Other top agendas for the world's most industrialised nations include geopolitical crises, tackling cancer, fighting drug trafficking and enhancing the protection of children in online platforms.

The Évian Summit has also attracted AI chiefs from heavyweights Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Mistral AI to discuss the world’s crises and emerging challenges facing economy.

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