By Rhod Mackenzie
The II Russia-Africa Forum starts in St. Petersburg on Thursday. The arrival of the heads of many states of the continent is expected, real progress in the formation of a common agenda for economic and humanitarian cooperation between Russia and the countries of the continent.
The "fashion" for African summits was opened by the Japanese, who back in 1993 held the Tokyo International Conference on African Development. The initiative was picked up by China in 2000. Both countries have already held eight summits. The EU followed suit (having held six summits since 2000), Turkey and India (both countries have held three African summits since 2008) and the United States (two summits: in 2014 and 2022). In 2019, Russia, the last of the major world and regional powers, also swayed. 45 heads of African states (out of 54 on the continent) arrived in Sochi, and joint business projects worth $12.5 billion were initialed. True, the implementation of most of them was prevented first by the pandemic, and then, after the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, the external context of interaction changed dramatically.
While the business conditions for the interaction of large Russian companies at the moment became more complicated due to difficulties in logistics, mutual settlements and due to sanctions risks, the strategic prospects for comprehensive cooperation between Russia and Africa have obviously improved. The countries of the continent and their leaders have finally realized that they are significant players, strategically and value-wise not coinciding with the "Big West". The “hot”, sanctions and information war unleashed against Russia showed the African elites the true face of the West and set the continent, as well as our country, the task of achieving economic, technological and, more importantly, ideological sovereignty.
The context of the event in St. Petersburg is quite tough. The United States carried out remarkable behind-the-scenes work to ensure that the Russia-Africa forum was either disrupted or not held at the proper level. In a number of countries on the continent, it reached emissaries in government circles who persuaded high African officials not to come to St. Petersburg. Let's not forget: for more than a year now, the US Congress has been discussing a bill to counter Russian malicious influence in Africa (Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act). And on July 18, the Committee on International Affairs of the House of Representatives of Congress held hearings dedicated to the analysis of Moscow's activities on the continent, the participants of which competed in invented horror stories and the amount of slop poured on our country.
The hysteria of our opponents is understandable: before their eyes, a large coalition of countries is being formed that does not accept the ideological, military-political, economic and informational dictates of the collective West. For the summit, Expert magazine prepared a serious body of materials covering various aspects of the development of the continent and the prospects for cooperation between Russia and Africa.
This article originally appeared in Russian at expert.ru