African media continue to report that in visiting Egypt, the Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Uganda, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is preparing for what will be only the second Russia-Africa Summit, to occur in 2023. The Anglosphere is not at all happy at this prospect in a continent which resists and criticizes anti-Russia sanctions and welcomed the Black Sea grain agreements; especially given that virtually all African heads of state already participate in regular Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The “analysis” of Lavrov’s trip appearing in Reuters and from London-based pundits on media like the Indian-owned WION, is that Lavrov is only trying to use Africa’s food and inflation crisis to “turn it against the West.”
Reuters was used to convey a threat from Western financiers that Western financing could be cut, should African nations strengthen relations with Russia. “Dismaying Western donors,” Lavrov has invited ambassadors from several African Union member states to a private meeting on July 27 when he is in the AU headquarters in Ethiopia, the goal of which is “to deepen cooperation between Russia and African states,” Reuters wrote, repeating, for emphasis, that the planned meeting “was causing friction among Western donors because it signaled a pivot towards Russia.” How dare he, the same day U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Mike Hammer is to also be in Ethiopia, seeking to “court” Africa, as Reuters put it!
By first visiting Egypt, Lavrov was able to emphasize, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his ministers, the crucial infrastructural Russian inputs to Egypt’s economic infrastructure as well as its military defense. In a July 22 article Lavrov wrote for four African publications from each of the countries he planned to visit, he said, “The task of bringing Russian and African economic operators to each other’s markets and encouraging them to participate in large-scale infrastructure projects also comes to the fore. [Henry Carey!—ed.] We assume that, as conducted, the second Africa-Russia summit will facilitate settling those and other tasks.” Lavrov placed that meeting early in 2023. (https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1823250/)
The first Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum “for Peace, Security and Development” was held in Sochi on October 23-24, 2019.
