AfricaTopSuccess They make Africa
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the Republic of Congo on Monday, the second leg of an African tour aimed at strengthening ties between Moscow and Africa, the continent which keeps its line of neutrality in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
African countries, which have a tangled heritage of relations with the West and the former Soviet Union, have largely avoided taking sides in the war in Ukraine.
Many import Russian grain and, increasingly, energy, but they also buy Ukrainian grain and benefit from Western aid flows and trade links.
Africa is also being courted by the West this week, with French President Emmanuel Macron due to travel to Benin and Guinea-Bissau after Cameroon, where he has been since Monday, and the US special envoy for the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer on his way to Egypt and Ethiopia.
Lavrov has already been to Egypt and will visit Congo, Uganda and then Ethiopia, where African Union diplomats said they had invited ambassadors from several member states to a private meeting on Wednesday, dismaying the Western donors.
An invitation letter from the Russian ambassador to Ethiopia and the AU, sent to a number of African ambassadors and seen by Reuters, said the aim of the meeting was to deepen cooperation between the Russia and African States.
Two AU diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity said the planned meeting, which would coincide with Hammer’s visit, was causing friction among Western donors because it signaled a pivot to Russia. Spokespersons for the AU, based in Addis Ababa, and Ethiopia’s foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
In a column published in the newspapers of the four countries included in his tour, Lavrov praised Africa for its resistance to what he called Western attempts to impose a unipolar world order.
