News & Analysis

Presidents Ramaphosa and Ouattara ‘pleased’ to see Ukrainian grains deal signed

The Pres­i­dent of Ivory Coast, Alas­sane Ouat­tara, vis­it­ed South Africa on Friday.
Out­tara was wel­comed by his South African coun­ter­part, Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa in the cap­i­tal, Pretoria.
The vis­it coin­cid­ed with a UN and Turkey-bro­kered agree­ment to allow Ukraine and Rus­sia to export grain and fertilizers. 

“It has tak­en much too long, in my view, because that con­flict has put a stop to the import or expor­tat of grain, fer­til­iz­ers and oth­er food­stuffs like wheat to var­i­ous oth­er parts of the world. And we are there­fore pleased. That this may indeed in the end become a real­i­ty. Would this be seen as sig­nalling some­thing that could amount to the end of that con­flict? I would like to believe that, yes”, said South African Pres­i­dent Cyril Ramaphosa. 
Refer­ring to Mali, the Ivo­rian pres­i­dent reject­ed ear­li­er sug­ges­tions that his coun­try was inter­fer­ing in its neighbour. 
The accu­sa­tions were linked to the deten­tion of a group of Ivo­rian sol­diers accused of being mercenaries.
” Ivory Coast can­not afford to attempt to desta­bi­lize any coun­try and espe­cial­ly not a neigh­bor­ing coun­try (such as Mali). And they are the same peo­ples, the same pop­u­la­tion. The rela­tion­ships are close, are very close. We use the same cur­ren­cy, we use the same legal frame­work, etc. It (Mali) is a friend­ly coun­try and broth­er and sis­ter pop­u­la­tions. There­fore, there isn’t any ques­tion about us engag­ing in any attempt to desta­bi­lize”, reas­sured Alas­sane Ouat­tara, Pres­i­dent of Ivory Coast.
Dur­ing the vis­it to South Africa, the two pres­i­dents signed a num­ber of agree­ments and Ouat­tara addressed the South Africa — Ivory Coast Busi­ness Forum.