MOSCOW – The development of a comprehensive partnership with African countries remains among top priorities of Russia’s foreign policy, Moscow is open to its further build-up, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an article for the African media, published on Friday on the Foreign Ministry’s website.
“The development of a comprehensive partnership with African countries remains among the top priorities of Russia’s foreign policy. We are willing to contribute to its further growth – in line with the strategic decisions taken in late October 2019 at the first Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi,” TASS news agency quoted the foreign minister as saying.
Lavrov stressed that Russia “does not impose anything on anyone or tells others how to live.”
“We treat with great respect the sovereignty of the States of Africa, and their inalienable right to determine the path of their development for themselves. We are firmly committed to the ‘African solutions to African problems’ principle,” he said.
“Such an approach to developing inter-State ties dramatically differs from the ‘master – slave’ logic imposed by former metropolitan countries, which reproduces the obsolete colonial model,” he added.
