Russia-Africa Summit 2019 - Russia’s biz with Africa to reach different levels

Africa is bursting out with tremendous potential in almost all the sectors and mainly due to the exploited supporting Nature, the investors and entrepreneurs are getting severely interested to invest in this vast continent. Not only the untapped markets in diverse segments for decades, but the presence of natural resources is also another reason why the global players are giving efforts to foray into Africa. The United States and China have already had multiplications in investment budgets in the last few years with the latter penetrating the most, while now Russia is giving no stones unturned in digging out the scintillating potentials in Africa. The upcoming Russia-Africa Summit is going to be the first event of an international level for the first time in the history of Russian-African relations.

The Russian city of Sochi is going to host the first Russia-Africa Summit on October 24, 2019. The summit, which will be chaired by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, will have the discussions on the issues related to the modern international situation, current relations of the countries in political, trade and economic including other areas and their prospects.

The imminent Russia-Africa Summit 2019 is planned to discuss in details a wide range of issues on the international agenda including a joint response to new challenges and threats and also boosting the regional stability. The participants are said to be adopting a political declaration on the key areas of cooperation between Russia and Africa once the summit completes. “We expect that these events will become a major milestone in Russian-African relations and will also help define our future partnership,” Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov said.

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Russian presence on the African continent was limited to mainly the export of raw material and military cooperation. South Africa’s successful effort in joining BRICS in December 2010 created high mutual interest in the cooperation as BRICS is the acronym coined for an association of five major emerging national economies, i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Since then South Africa has created strong political, social and economic ties with Russia. Russia has also been at the forefront in the last couple of years in providing medical helps like when Ebola epidemic affected Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in 2014. Russia’s discovery of the world’s first Ebola vaccine named GamEvac-Combi is highly commendable.

Russia’s Head of State, Vladimir Putin appointed Yuri Ushakov to chair the organizing committee, which is responsible for paving the way for the first Russia-Africa Summit 2019 in Sochi. The government of Russia has ensured the finances of expenditures related to the summit. The Kremlin Presidential Administration announced on its website at the end of May about the hosting of Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi and the policy members advised the body (Kremlin) to substantiate its future African policy agenda with activeness, consistency and support including enhancement of its participation in Africa’s economic development. The efforts will be made in the direction of transferring Russian technology to the varied industries and agriculture in Africa more collaboratively added with the creation of more associations on employment creation across diverse sectors. On the other hand, as Africa is highly combating against terrorism, cooperation on defense mechanisms and the fighting strategies with technological advancement will also be one more vital topic to be discussed at the imminent Russia-Africa Summit.

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