September 16, 2023 Professor Irina Abramova explained the importance of Russia changing its approach to Africa
The Russia-Africa summit held this summer in St. Petersburg was important, but one of many reminders of how important the Dark Continent is for our country. The director of the Institute of African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor Irina Abramova talks about the opportunities associated with the restoration of Russian-African ties in an interview with MK.
– Over the past few years, Africa has begun to occupy a large place in the information picture of the day. Thus, many media outlets called the accession of the African Union to this format one of the main achievements of the G20 summit held recently in New Delhi. Or take the BRICS summit recently held in Johannesburg, where the number of members of this organization increased due to African countries - Egypt and Ethiopia, not counting South Africa. And Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria are also on the way...
– Just a year ago, Africa was not as widely represented in the Russian media as it is today. And to a large extent this is due to the interests of both Russian business and the Russian elite in the conditions in which they found themselves after the start of a special military operation. They had to largely curtail their activities in the West.
Africa began to attract their attention in this sense, because any normal person understands: you cannot focus only on the East, a “turn” to which we announced in 2014 after the beginning of a difficult situation in our relations with Ukraine.
Today we have come to realize that the “non-Western world” is not reduced solely to China and India, but there is a large continent consisting of 54 states, rapidly developing, and in some indicators already ahead of both China and India. I mean the growth rate of the middle class, which is one of the main consumers of modern goods and services. And in this sense, for Russia the need to build relations with the African continent in a political and economic sense is extremely important. Apparently, this understanding did not come because we consistently developed relations with Africa and understood that we needed to build our dialogue with different states. We just found ourselves in a situation where we need to look for new partners. And in this sense, Africa “unexpectedly” became very attractive for us. If this had happened much earlier, and not under the conditions in which we find ourselves today, I am sure that the results of this policy would have been more effective for both Africans and our country. Because, in my opinion, any foreign policy should be structured from the point of view of realizing the interests of one’s own development. In this context, integrating the African agenda into Russia’s development program is a very important element.
I really hope that representatives of both our political elites and Russian business understand this. At the last Russia-Africa summit, very important political statements were made about the growing role of the African continent and that our partnership must be transferred to a strategic level. This was stated at the previous summit, but I think now there is a real opportunity to move from words to deeds. As a result of the second summit, a specific action plan for 2023-2026 was adopted.
The events that took place after the St. Petersburg summit (this is both the BRICS meeting and the G20, at which the African Union became a member) indicate that the Russian, or more precisely, “non-Western” vision of the modern world will gradually prevail. And the 54 voices of African states are important for shaping a new global agenda. On the other hand, in economic terms, at the summit in St. Petersburg there were twice as many Russian businessmen as African ones. And I remember the sessions of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum 2017-2018, when mostly African representatives sat in the hall - and you could literally count the representatives of Russian business on your fingers. Now the situation is exactly the opposite.
We must change our approach to Africa. But from declarations - we say: “Africa is our strategic partner, Africa is important to us” - we need to move on to concrete actions and projects. Let it not be so large-scale (although we also have large-scale projects). A number of projects should be quickly implemented and visual. First of all, in the sphere of solving Africa’s food and energy problems. At the same time, they must satisfy mutual interests - Russian and African. But our interests coincide, our economies complement each other.
