Russia welcomes the rising international authority of individual African states as well as the continent as a whole, and their desire to make their voices strongly heard, President Vladimir Putin said in an article released ahead of the second Russia-Africa Summit and Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum in St. Petersburg.
In the piece, penned by Putin for major African media and shared by the Kremlin early Monday morning, the Russian president said that Moscow “highly values the honestly-gained capital of friendship and cooperation” and welcomes African partners’ desire to “take the continent’s problems into their own hands.”
“We are brought together by a common desire to shape a system of relations based on the priority of international law, respect for national interests, indivisibility of security, and recognition of the central coordinating role of the United Nations,” Putin wrote.
The Russian leader said that Moscow stands for “granting African countries their rightful place in the structures that determine the world’s fate,” including the UN Security Council and the G20, and supports “reforming the global financial and trade institutions in a way that meets their interests.”
The second Russia-Africa Summit is scheduled for July 27-28, taking place alongside the Economic and Humanitarian Forum, which is expected to provide a platform for business meetings and panel sessions. Forty-nine countries have confirmed their participation, according to Aleksandr Polyakov, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Africa department.
The first high-level meeting, attended by nearly 50 African heads of state, was held in Sochi in 2019 under the theme ‘For peace, security, and development’.
