Russian President Vladimir Putin has promised to ship 50,000 metric tons of grain each to Zambia’s neighbour Zimbabwe and five other African countries free of charge.
Delivering his opening speech during the Russia-Africa Summit which commenced today and will run up to July 29, 2023 and being attended by several African heads of states, including representation from 49 African countries, President Putin said Russia will be ready to ship free grain to some of Africa’s poorest nations within the next three to four months.
He made the pledge during a speech at the Russia-Africa summit being held in St. Petersburg. President Putin will hold bilateral talks with all the 17 heads of states attending the Summit, including signing agreements in areas of technology, security and humanitarian efforts. Some powerhouse countries on the Continent, including South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia are being represented by their heads of states. There is also high level representation from the President and Commission Chairperson of the African Union and other regional bodies on the Continent. However, newly sworn in President from another African powerhouse Bola Tinubu is not attending the event.
Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somali, the Central African Republic, and Eritrea will each receive 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain, the Russian leader said. Moscow will also cover the delivery costs of the shipments, he added.
The announcement comes a week after Moscow refused to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative, an arrangement which had allowed Ukraine to export grain by commercial ships. The UN- and Türkiye-mediated deal had been touted as a humanitarian effort to protect the world’s poorest nations from surging food prices.
However, Moscow has long insisted that the agreement had failed achieve its purported aims and had turned into a purely commercial enterprise. Putin reiterated that the UN’s inability to persuade Western nations to lift economic sanctions on Russian food and fertilizer exports, which was part of the deal, had marred the entire reasoning for the operation.
“They created obstacles even to our plans to donate fertilizers to the poorest nations that needed them,” the Russian leader said. “Out of 262,000 tons of the fertilizers blocked in European ports, we’ve managed to ship only two lots: merely 20,000 tons to Malawi and 34,000 tons to Kenya. The rest remains in the hands of the Europeans.”
Western leaders are hypocritical to accuse Moscow of causing instability on the global food market, considering their efforts to undermine Russian exports, Putin claimed. Despite Western-imposed sanctions, Russia is ramping up supplies to Africa, both commercial and humanitarian, he added.
