France-Algeria: Emmanuel Macron seeks to repair damaged ties during three-day visit
Emmanuel Macron will begin a three-day official visit to Algeria on Thursday, aimed at turning the page on years of disputes and tension between the host country and France.
The French president wants to concentrate on "rebuilding" a relationship that remains marked by the weight of the past.
The visit of a large French delegation, including seven ministers, coincides with the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and the proclamation of Algeria's independence in 1962.
For France, better relations with its former colony are growing more important because an energy shortage due to Russia's war in Ukraine has raised demand for North African gas, and because of growing migration across the Mediterranean.
Algeria meanwhile wants to take advantage of high energy prices to secure big contracts and investment projects, as it has already done with Italy and Turkey.
However, Algerian gas is "really not the subject of the visit", the Elysée Palace told AFP.
Macron hopes his visit will end a diplomatic row and allow him to develop his relationship with young Algerians.
This is the second time Macron has visited Algeria as president, after a first visit in December 2017, at the very beginning of his first five-year term.
Relations between the two countries looked promising at the time with a young French president, born after 1962 and freed from the weight of history, who had described French colonisation as a "crime against humanity".
But they quickly turned sour, caught up in memories that remain difficult to reconcile after 132 years of colonisation, a bloody war and the departure of a million French people from Algeria in 1962.
Macron has recognised the responsibility of the French army in the death of the mathematician Maurice Audin
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