CAIRO, December 20. /TASS/. Russia is a reliable partner for African countries in their efforts to strengthen their national sovereignty, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"Today, we are witnessing Africa’s second revival, strengthening its international authority. We support our African friends’ striving for an independent, free choice of partners. We remain a reliable friend to African countries in their efforts toward strengthening their national sovereignty, both in terms of politics, security and other dimensions - economic, energy, food, technology, digitalization, personnel, information - based on their own resources and national interests, and those foreign partners who fully respect these interests," he said at a plenary session of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum’s conference.
According to the top Russian diplomat, to achieve a lasting settlement of crises in Africa, it is necessary to eliminate their root causes inherited from Western colonialism, i.e. "the system that violated the natural historic path of African peoples, established arbitrary borders and an economic order that is oriented toward servicing interests of Western monopolies."
"Regrettably, various forms of neocolonialism remain until today. We are ready to pool efforts with our African partners to uproot them, including by means of developing legal instruments to assess and ensure the compensation of the damage incurred during the colonial period," he noted. "After the first Russia-Africa ministerial conference last year, we agreed to look at establishing a relevant permanent coordination mechanism.".