Ukraine's FM sets on first-time African tour to attract more support
Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/ЕРА
From October 3 to 12, Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba will make the first tour to African countries in the history of Ukrainian diplomacy.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs press service, Kuleba will start his tour with a visit to Senegal.
"The key topic of the minister's negotiations will be the consolidation of political support for Ukraine from the countries of the global south amid russia's aggression, in particular the latest attempt to annex Ukrainian territories," the foreign policy department informed.
Other priorities of the negotiations will be strengthening Ukraine's role as a guarantor of global food security, deepening cooperation in the field of education, promoting Ukrainian IT products, in particular the Diia platform, and creating new opportunities for Ukrainian exports using the capabilities of the Nazovni system, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted.
Several business forums with the participation of leading Ukrainian and African companies are also planned as part of the visits.
The minister's tour will also prepare for holding a large-scale Ukraine-Africa conference.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that the tour is an essential element of the African strategy, which was developed on behalf of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, and became a "road map" for developing relations between our country and the region.
In early August, the Ukrainian president called on African countries not to be neutral in russia's war against Ukraine. He said that if a country doesn't have enough economic or political weight to influence the russian federation and force it to stop the war, then at least at the level of diplomacy, it needs to condemn death, autocracy, racism, Nazism, and "racism," and aggression. Zelensky also added that the world community should have paid more attention to what was happening in some countries of the African continent, which have also experienced wars and tragedies.
As reported in late July, russian foreign minister sergei lavrov went on a tour of African countries, visiting Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo. As British intelligence pointed out, russia will likely try to use these visits to blame the West for the international food crisis and enlist the support of African states that remained neutral regarding russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Since 2014, russia has made significant efforts to secure influence in Africa, with the Wagner group often used as one of its favorite tools of influence in the region, British intelligence officials said.
As the NYT reported, several African countries have an ambiguous attitude to the West's position due to the russian-Ukrainian war and sanctions against the Kremlin, as they depend on the supply of not only food but also weapons from Moscow. The situation is also exacerbated by severe drought, which may trigger famine on the continent.
Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies HORN, Hassan Khannenje, told the NYT that African countries are unlikely to hesitate to buy grain supplied by russia because they are not concerned about the origin of the food.
Droughts and war in Ukraine led to global grain reserves decade low — Reuters
Countries neutral to war in Ukraine are complicit with russia – Macron
Zelensky on Ukrainian grain export: Unlike russia, we do not make racist division of the world
Rubryka's Timeline of war: current news on Ukraine's defense against russia's aggression.
