Sergei Lavrov on Tour in Africa to Reassure and Try to Strengthen Russian Influence on the Continent
He said that the agreement reached on the export of grain is still valid.
More than 13,000 kilometers on the program in only five days!
The African tour of the head of Russian diplomacy Sergey Lavrov sounds like a charm offensive of Vladimir Putin's Russia on the continent. Faced with a continent threatened by the "most serious food crisis" of this decade, according to the UN, Russia is trying to reassure its African partners while strengthening its influence.
“Russian grain exporters will respect all obligations,” he insisted, on Saturday, July 23, 2022, in Cairo, Egypt, the first stage of his journey. The same day, the Russian army bombed the Ukrainian port of Odesa, despite the agreement reached the day before between Kyiv, Moscow, and Turkey. The text, signed in Istanbul, under the aegis of the UN, is supposed to allow the movement, through secure corridors, of 20 to 25 million tons of grain blocked in Ukraine for six months and facilitate Russian agricultural exports.
According to Mr. Lavrov, the Russian strikes have targeted only military infrastructure, “at a significant distance from the grain terminal,” he assured Monday, July 25, 2022, after a meeting with Denis Sassou Nguesso, President of the Republic of Congo, where he went after his visit to Egypt.
For African countries, the stakes are high. Egypt, which imports 80% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, fears food riots. Elsewhere, dependence on these grains varies, but soaring food and energy prices are putting millions of households on the continent at risk.
A temporary respite for African countries
In early June 2022, the Senegalese head of state, Macky Sall, current chairman of the African Union (AU), and Moussa Faki Mahamat, head of the AU Commission, went to Sochi, Russia, to remind Vladimir Putin that African countries were “victims” of the crisis and to demand the resumption of grain and fertilizer shipments.
“The delivery of stocks will lead to a drop in the price of foodstuffs and will relieve African households, but this remains a temporary respite, as the conflict is a long-term one. But, even more than wheat, access to fertilizer, for which there are almost no substitutes today, seems the most urgent issue,” says Gilles Yabi, founder of the Wathi group, a West African citizen think tank based in Dakar.
Russian fertilizers were subject to an embargo until the agreement with Ukraine. However, without access to these fertilizers, on which they are highly dependent, West African countries could experience a deficit of 20 million tons of grain in the 2022 harvest.
Sergei Lavrov's tour is also part of the communication strategy conducted by Moscow, which has been presenting itself for several years as an alternative to Western countries. “Russia is now seizing the opportunity to capitalize on the pro-Russian sympathies of many African states that hide behind a so-called non-alignment,” says Paul-Simon Handy, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, South Africa.
On March 2, 2022, at the UN, seventeen African countries abstained from voting on a resolution to condemn the invasion of Ukraine. “However, this sympathy has more to do with defiance towards the West than with a real adhesion to a project carried by Putin,” estimates the expert.
Faced with Western sanctions, Russia has no choice but to seek new partners
The Russian government intends to capitalize on what it considers a diplomatic victory. “Despite the unprecedented external pressure, our friends did not support sanctions against Russia. This independent line deserves great respect,” Sergei Lavrov congratulated himself in an article published in Les Dépêches de Brazzaville, the only daily newspaper in the Republic of Congo, before his tour.
The Russian envoy also criticizes “Western and Ukrainian propaganda, which claims that Russia 'exports famine’” and boasts that Russia “has not tarnished its reputation by bloody crimes of colonialism”.
Present in the field of security in Mali and the Central African Republic, in particular, Russia is trying to expand its scope to other regions and sectors to increase its influence in Africa. Egypt has entrusted the construction of a four-reactor power plant to the Russian public atomic energy company Rosatom. In the Republic of Congo, a Russian company is working on the construction of a major oil pipeline to bring oil from the city of Pointe Noire to the north of the country.
“Russia has no choice. Faced with the sanctions that are being imposed on it, it has to find new partners. Its message to the West is clear: from now on, its involvement in Africa will no longer be cosmetic, as it was ten years ago, but will become a permanent part of its foreign policy strategy,” analyses Paul-Simon Handy. After Egypt and Congo-Brazzaville, Sergueï Lavrov was to go to Uganda, then to Ethiopia, the country hosting the AU headquarters. Steps far from being insignificant. “These countries are historical allies of Russia, whose leaders do not consider human rights and democracy as priorities,” notes Gilles Yabi.
Serguei Lavrov also announced the holding of a Russo-African summit, in 2023, on the model of the first edition in 2019, which had gathered, in Sochi, about forty African leaders and a myriad of businessmen. At the same time, French President Emmanuel Macron is also touring Cameroon, Benin, and Guinea-Bissau until July 28, 2022, against the backdrop of the fight against terrorism and food insecurity. The goal is for France and Europe to regain control of the rising influence of Russia in Africa by proposing concrete measures.
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