Russia is ready to expand cooperation with African countries and regional organizations through new partnerships in business and other sectors, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Speaking at a meeting with the heads of leading African media outlets on Tuesday, Lavrov said Moscow was open to developing additional forms of engagement with the African Union, individual countries and regional blocs.
“Our partnership is already quite extensive, and there is certainly room to enrich and refine it; we are fully open to that,” Lavrov said.
The minister also stressed that Russia seeks to strengthen ties with Africa on the basis of equality and mutual benefit, helping countries develop domestic industries and become more independent in global finance and technology. He said Moscow’s approach follows UN principles of mutual respect and non-interference.
Lavrov argued that Africa’s next major transformation will be economic, noting that many countries remain dependent on former colonial powers despite having gained political independence.
“The second awakening [of African countries] will, of course, be economic, including achieving a situation where the richest resources of the African continent are not simply extracted and exported as raw materials, but are used in Africa itself so that added value is created there, rather than in the former colonial powers,” he said.
Turning to UN reform, Lavrov opposed increasing Western representation on the Security Council, arguing that Western countries already occupy six of its 15 seats despite their declining share of global economic output.
“Like China and many other countries, we [Russia] maintain that only nations from the Global South should be granted new seats—whether permanent, non-permanent, or a mix of both,” Lavrov said.
The 15-member UN Security Council has five veto-wielding permanent members and ten elected members serving two-year terms. Africa currently holds three seats, occupied by DR Congo, Liberia and Somalia, with Zimbabwe set to replace Somalia in January 2027.
The remarks came at the four-day Russia-Africa Media Forum, which opened in Moscow on Monday. The gathering comes ahead of the third Russia-Africa Summit and the accompanying Economic and Humanitarian Forum, taking place on Wednesday and Thursday in Moscow.
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