President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has been welcomed by his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, Paris ahead of the Summit on Financing African Economies.

The summit which will be held today in a temporary exhibition centre under the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris will try to fill a financing shortfall of almost $300 billion caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

It hopes to put in place financial resources capable of reviving the economy of the continent, which has seen only 130,000 deaths from Covid according to official figures, but whose GDP should experience its first recession in 25 years in 2021.

Some two dozen African heads of state including Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will attend Tuesday's summit and it will be one of the biggest in-person top-level meetings held during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Also expected to be among the participants in person are the leaders of Angola, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, Togo and Tunisia and on the European side, Italy, Spain and Portugal as well as the EU.

The leaders of the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Kenya and Tanzania will participate by video conference.