French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the talks on February 15, 2021 (Photo: AFP/VNA)

Leaders of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger are meeting in Chad's capital city N'Djamena for the two-day summit. Macron is attending via videolink.

Opening the talks, Chad's President Idriss Deby Itno called for more financial support from international communities to reduce poverty in Sahel, which is considered one of the fundamental causes of terrorism.

This is the first connection between the G5 Sahel and France, which will be followed by talks with its other international partners. The summit takes place a year after the meeting in the city of Pau, southwest of France, in which Paris decided to deploy 600 extra soldiers to the “Three Borders” project (Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger), and increase the number of troops in Sahel to 5,100.