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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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.