Kenya's parliament ratified a defence cooperation agreement with France on 9 April, formalising a partnership that covers intelligence sharing, maritime security in the Indian Ocean, peacekeeping operations, and humanitarian assistance. The deal, originally signed in October 2024, comes as France has been expelled from several of its traditional strongholds in francophone West Africa — including Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal, Chad, and Côte d'Ivoire — leaving Paris in search of new footholds on the continent. Kenya, an English-speaking country with no colonial ties to France, is seen as an ideal partner precisely because it carries none of that historical baggage; Nairobi, in turn, gains a chance to diversify its security alliances beyond its traditional reliance on the US and UK, and to cement its status as a continental diplomatic and economic hub — symbolised by its co-hosting with France of the "Africa Forward" Franco-African summit in Nairobi on 11–12 May, the first time the summit has been held outside a French-speaking country since its launch in 1973.