The Monaco Economic Board (MEB) has announced its membership of the Alliance of Francophone Employers on Monday, August 3, a move designed to expand growth opportunities and international reach for businesses across the Principality, as part of its broader evolution into a Chamber of Commerce.
The Alliance brings together 44 professional organisations, including numerous chambers of commerce, spread across 37 countries and representing more than one million companies worldwide. Its core aim is to strengthen trade flows across the Francophone world, built on the belief that a shared language meaningfully accelerates business exchanges, supporting better mutual understanding, smoother decision-making, and the kind of trust essential to doing business internationally.
For Monaco, the partnership is expected to deepen existing economic ties with Africa, a region already closely connected to the Principality, while also opening a more direct pathway into markets where those links have traditionally been less established, particularly across South-East Asia.
That regional focus will be on full display this November, when Phnom Penh, Cambodia, hosts the sixth Francophone Entrepreneurs’ Meeting (La REF), organised for the first time in South-East Asia in partnership with the Cambodia Chamber of Commerce. The event is expected to draw more than 3,000 executives and investors, and will run alongside the 20th Francophonie Summit. Monaco’s involvement will include a diplomatic delegation led by Isabelle Berro-Amadeï, Government Counsellor and Minister for External Relations and Cooperation, alongside MEB Executive Director General Guillaume Rose and Deputy CEO Justin Highman, who will travel to Cambodia together with Monégasque entrepreneurs already active in the region, laying the groundwork for potential future economic missions to South-East Asia.
The Alliance membership forms part of a wider push by the MEB to refine its services through new business networking platforms and more targeted international connections. As part of that same evolution, the organisation is set to be renamed the Chamber of Commerce of Monaco, a change that will be put forward for approval at its Extraordinary General Meeting on October 5.