Russia needs to go beyond its traditional rhetoric of Soviet assistance rendered to Africa. It is important now to highlight concrete success stories and policy achievements, at least, during the past decade in Africa. The young generation and the middle class, aged between 25 to 45 that make the bulk of the 1.3 population, hardly see the broad positive impact of Russia’s economic cooperation with Africa. Russia plans to hold the second Russia-Africa summit later this year. Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, indicated in mid-June message that “in these difficult and crucial times the strategic…
Author: Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Understandably the African Union, pan-African organization uniting 55 African States, has the legitimate mandate for building external relations with institutions and organizations outside Africa. The AU has established long-term working relations with European Union and now seeking to build similar links with Eurasian Union. Interesting to examine both the European Union and the Eurasian Union within the global changes in relation to African Union. Our key focus here is on the Eurasian Union and the African Union. This article, therefore, explores some historical background and basic definitive facts aim at deepening readers’ understanding of its evolutionary processes, expectations and limitations.…
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been focusing on developments, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic and currently the Russia-Ukraine crisis, both shattered economies including and its impacts, on Africa. While Covid-19 seems to subsides, it is uncertain when the crisis might not end soon between Russia on one side and the United States and European Union. One fundamental effect is that economic gains recorded previously are being eroded by the Covid-19 and Russia-Ukraine crisis in Africa. African leaders are showing their pragmatism in diplomacy as it was during Cold War times – the ideological-political confrontation between East and West. African…
At least, during the past few years, including the Covid-19 pandemic period, the United Kingdom has consistently followed its planned agenda with African countries. The UK has an agenda and decisively been implementing all aspects. It describes “Africa as a reliable partner” during its historic UK-Africa Investment Summit held in January 2020. Monitoring developments after the summit, despite Covid-19 pandemic that has caused disruptions and lockdowns including in Africa, the United Kingdom has ultimately achieved some successes with Africa. With our broad and random research, we have noticed different priorities – all of which are supporting and strengthening economic partnerships…
Without doubt, Africa’s political history has indeed documented that power collapses, absolute power collapses absolutely. The worst scenerio is political power fraught with deep-seated corruption, lack of transparency and lack of public accountability. This has been the case, over the years, throughout the world. And, of course, examples are abound in Europe, Asia and Africa. Corruption has been an unerasable characteristic feature of African politics, from Maghreb down to the Southern African Development Community, from East African Community and the Horn of Africa across the Sahel to the Atlantic coastal West African States. During political campaigns almost all the potential…
In these difficult and crucial times, the strategic partnership with Africa has become a priority of Russia’s foreign policy, declared Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister. The difficult times understandably refers to both the Covid-19 pandemic and the current period when Russia’s own “special military operation” in Ukraine has shattered the global economy. But why is Russia so quiet over its vaccine diplomacy in Africa? What has Russia-African Union relations brought to the health sector in Africa? Why Russia’s vaccine diplomacy could arguably be described as a failure for vulnerable groups and vaccinable people among the 1.3 billion population. The…
Europe is still looking for reliable alternative sources of energy especially gas, as its energy relations has fallen nosedive with Russia. It has been exploring energy sources from Asian region down to Africa. But while African energy sources exist, it largely lacks infrastructure to transport it up to Europe. And transporting gas would have to go across borders which requires some kind of regulations and clearance agreements between the African countries. The Trans-Saharan gas pipeline (also known as NIGAL pipeline and Trans-African gas pipeline) was first proposed back in the 1970s. The inter-governmental agreement on the pipeline was signed by…
The African Union (AU) Information and Communication Directorate (ICD) in close partnership with GIZ (German Corporation for International Corporation) is implementing its first AU Media Fellowship programme within the framework of the AU-German Government initiative, the “Citizen Engagement and Innovative Data Use for Africa’s Development (DataCipation)”. The Fellowship Programme is one of the activities being undertaken by the AU in line with the decision of the 2nd African Union Specialized Technical Committee on Communication and Information Communication Technologies (STCCICT) 2017, at which the Ministers resolved to promote engagement with African journalists for their recognition of the important role and tremendous…
Approximately a year ago, August 2021, Dr Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) wrote an opinion article in which he rhetorically asked What Would Happen to the World Without the United States. That article was and still is an informative and thought provoking. It offers an insight into the need for global cooperation, peace and solidarity. It brings into memory the Communist slogans: the world without nuclear, peace and development, friendship and international solidarity. After the historic fall of the Soviet era, Russia really dreamed of raising its status by joining international organizations. Over the…
With rising cases of Monkeypox, not only in Africa but also in the United States and Europe, the world is currently experiencing shivering fears for the next tremendous negative impact similar to Covid-19. It all began the same way, the first case of Covid-19, and rapidly spread throughout the world. Soon to forget the world-wide border closures and other restrictions. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said about the plans on reconvening a meeting of his organization’s Emergency Committee to critically assess the current state of the monkeypox outbreak in Western countries. Ghebreyesus’s statement implies directing a…
