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| French President Emmanuel Macron |
Macron's advisers say he hopes to modernise France's relations with Africa by emphasising business links, education and sport rather than development aid.
Although Macron has pledged to increase France's aid budget to 0.55 percent of GDP by 2022, France's aid budget was cut by 140 million euros in July as part of 4.5 billion euros of reductions in public spending.
This summer the French president set up a committee to advise him on Africa policy.
It is made up primarily of young businesspeople with dual nationality and close connections with their country of origin.
As well as countering hostility to France's influence over its former colonies, which is particularly strong among young people, Macron also has to bury the memory of his controversial remark at a G20 meeting that Africa has "civilisational" problems, among them African women having "seven or eight children".
It will be recalled that Mr Macron after his inauguration last May visited Gao, Mali in what was his second foreign trip after Germany.
During the visit he said French troops would remain "until the day there is no more Islamic terrorism in the region".
Later in July, Mr Macron returned to Mali where he joined West African presidents to launch a new multinational military force to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel.
He told a regional summit the force should be fully operational by the autumn despite its current budget shortfall.
Some observers see the initiative of the G5 Sahel bloc - Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad - as forming the basis of an eventual exit strategy for around 4,000 French troops now deployed to the volatile region. But Macron said Paris had no plans to withdraw them.
However, his latest trip will see him visit three countries before returning to his native France.
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