News & Analysis

Global community urged not to let Ukraine crisis affect support for African nations

ISTANBUL The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has been urged to ensure that the fall­out from the Ukraine cri­sis should not have an impact on glob­al sup­port for African nations.A joint state­ment released after a meet­ing of the Forum on Chi­na-Africa Coop­er­a­tion on Thurs­day held vir­tu­al­ly and addressed by China’s For­eign Min­is­ter Wang Yi, urged the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to “active­ly help African coun­tries address food secu­ri­ty, cli­mate change, ener­gy cri­sis and oth­er glob­al issues.”Expressing sup­port for a peace­ful nego­ti­a­tion between Rus­sia and Ukraine, the state­ment called on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty not to “lev­el down sup­port and input to Africa because of the Ukraine issue.”Russia launched a war on Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary of this year, result­ing in hun­dreds of deaths on both sides and mil­lions flee­ing the coun­try, affect­ing glob­al sup­ply chains, espe­cial­ly ener­gy and food supplies.However, thanks to the efforts of Türkiye and the UN, a grain cor­ri­dor with a coor­di­na­tion cen­ter in Istan­bul has been estab­lished, allow­ing food sup­plies from Ukraine and Rus­sia to reach the rest of the world.“The two sides urge the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to take seri­ous­ly Africa’s con­cerns on expand­ing devel­op­ment financ­ing and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic recov­ery, accel­er­ate the chan­nel­ing of Spe­cial Draw­ing Rights, in a bid to help Africa achieve inde­pen­dent and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment,” the state­ment said.Wang told the forum that Chi­na sup­ports the African side in imple­ment­ing the “Silenc­ing the Guns” ini­tia­tive as the two sides not­ed that the world is fac­ing grow­ing secu­ri­ty chal­lenges, con­demn­ing all forms of ter­ror­ism and vio­lent extremism.Reciprocal sup­port­Reaf­firm­ing their com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ple of non-inter­fer­ence in inter­nal affairs, the Chi­nese side urged the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to “pro­vide finan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to counter-ter­ror­ism oper­a­tions led by Africa in accor­dance with the mech­a­nisms of the African Peace and Secu­ri­ty Architecture.”Expressing sup­port to uphold the pur­pos­es and prin­ci­ples of the UN-cen­tered inter­na­tion­al sys­tem, the state­ment urged uphold­ing “equal­i­ty among all coun­tries regard­less of their size, strength and wealth.”Without men­tion­ing any coun­try, the two sides opposed uni­lat­er­al­ism, pow­er pol­i­tics, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, the for­ma­tion of oppos­ing blocs, and divi­sion and confrontation.The state­ment reaf­firmed their mutu­al sup­port for ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty, secu­ri­ty, and devel­op­ment inter­ests, say­ing “there is but one Chi­na in the world … Tai­wan is an inalien­able part of China’s ter­ri­to­ry, and the gov­ern­ment of the People’s Repub­lic of Chi­na is the sole legal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sent­ing the whole of China.”“The African side reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to the one-Chi­na prin­ci­ple, and its sup­port for China’s nation­al reuni­fi­ca­tion and China’s efforts to safe­guard the sov­er­eign­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty,” it added.China and African nations also said they will con­tin­ue to fight COVID-19 with “sol­i­dar­i­ty, deep­en prac­ti­cal coop­er­a­tion, pro­mote green devel­op­ment, uphold equi­ty and justice.”According to the state­ment, the two sides will syn­er­gize China’s mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar Belt and Road Ini­tia­tive, the Glob­al Devel­op­ment Ini­tia­tive with the African Union’s Agen­da 2063, and nation­al devel­op­ment strate­gies of African coun­tries, “in order to ele­vate Chi­na-Africa coop­er­a­tion to high­er levels.”

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