MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. Representatives of African countries complain that the Europeans are putting pressure on them to go green, while they themselves are consuming more hydrocarbons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Not long ago we attended the BRICS summit. The Africans complained on the sidelines that the Europeans continue putting pressure on them, saying, let’s invest in the green economy, green transition, abandon coal. Whereas they themselves use coal much more than they did before, and much more than others," he said in an interview for the documentary "Oil" published on the website of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Commenting on the situation, Lavrov noted that oil and gas, and hydrocarbons overall, "will obviously play a key role in the global economy going forward, ensuring the prosperity of almost all countries of the world for a long time to come, more than a decade."