France announced earlier that it will host the leaders of India, South Korea, Brazil and Kenya at the summit to be held in Evian-les-Bains. SA, a regular guest at past G7 summits, said the French embassy in Pretoria had communicated the decision to the government \u200babout two weeks ago, saying the United States (US) had threatened to boycott the summit if SA was invited.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“We’ve accepted the French decision and \u200bappreciate the pressure they’ve been subjected to,” said Vincent Magwenya, a Spokesperson for SA President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Asked at a \u2060briefing whether SA had been excluded on the US’s request, a French official said this was not the case and that France had decided \u200bto invite Kenya this time. Macron is due to visit Kenya in May for a two-day Africa-France summit.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A White House official backed France’s account, saying the decision to invite \u200bKenya came after talks among G7 members, without commenting directly on the exclusion of SA. G7 leaders often invite multiple countries as guests.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe French, in their capacity as 2026 G7 host, expressed a desire in January to invite an African nation to the June G7 leaders\u2019 summit in Evian. After discussion among G7 members, it was collectively \u200bdetermined that Kenya should be invited to the summit. The US welcomes Kenya\u2019s participation,” the White House official said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has criticised SA’s \u200bforeign policy and domestic race laws during his second term, boycotted last year’s G20 summit in Johannesburg and excluded SA from G20 meetings this year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":30102,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-30101","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"French officials on Thursday denied \u200bexcluding South Africa (SA) from the list of invitees to the G7 leaders' summit in June due to pressure from Washington, saying \u200cKenya had been invited instead, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron's visit there later this year.","published_date":"","news_description":"French officials on Thursday denied \u200bexcluding South Africa (SA) from the list of invitees to the G7 leaders' summit in June due to pressure from Washington, saying \u200cKenya had been invited instead, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron's visit there later this year.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30103,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/30101\/revisions\/30103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=30101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}