ST. PETERSBURG, July 25. /TASS/. European countries’ attempts to shift the blame for their ebbing influence in Africa on to Russia are baseless and doomed to fail as the continent is becoming increasingly independent, Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Oleg Ozerov, head of the Secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, said on Tuesday.
Addressing the opening of the Valdai Discussion Club’s Russia-Africa Conference, he said: "Whenever we hear our so-called European partners <...> blaming their eroding positions on the African continent on Russia, it sounds entirely unpersuasive." "Several interrelated processes are taking place there. <…> These [African] nations are currently engaged in the process of forging their own self-agency," he explained.
According to Ozerov, Moscow "has nothing to do" with the problems facing the West in Africa. "Russia stands purely as a country that is helping contribute to the forging of the self-agency of the African continent, while helping to strengthen the sovereignty and sovereign equality of nations," he maintained.
The strengthening of Africa’s self-agency as well as a number of other important topics will be on the agenda of the Russia-Africa Summit, the Russian diplomat said. "In our view, the forthcoming Russia-Africa Summit will enable us to make a comparison between how Russia and African countries view the entire spectrum of contemporary world problems and formulate our common position toward strengthening and building the fundamentals of a multipolar world order," he continued. Boosting bilateral relations will also be discussed, as "Russia has some proposals to make to the African continent," he added.
The second Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum is slated for July 27-28 in St. Petersburg. The first such event was held in Sochi on October 22-24, 2019 under the slogan "For peace, security and development.".