March 28, 2024 (EIRNS)—United Nations Secretary General’s Special Representative for West Africa and the Sahel Leonardo Santos Simao spoke about the importance of the BRICS for Africa, in an interview with TASS. “What is my hope is that BRICS can be an additional source of financing development for Africa, in particular for West Africa and the Sahel. And if this is the case, I think the developments taking place are welcome indeed,” he said, when asked if BRICS enlargement could have a positive influence on the situation in the region. “I think a lot of work is still in progress to establish the rules and procedures and refine maybe the objectives on that,” he added. https://tass.com/world/1766997
Santos also noted the importance of the Summit of the Future to be held this September. He said the summit should tackle “the necessity to reform the international financial institutions, in particular the Bretton Woods institutions, to tackle the issues of making available financial means for development, financial development in Africa on one hand, but also to tackle the issues of debt also, which is another suffocating aspect for Africa development.” https://tass.com/world/1767009
In an obvious reference to the West’s concern over the activities of Russia and China in Africa, he said that “there is space enough for everybody,” and that Africans “wanted this diversification of relationship because they see this as an option to try efforts of development which didn’t happen in the past.”
