By Enyichukwu Enemanna
African Union (AU) has called on the global community to stop pressuring the continent to take a position on the ongoing war in Ukraine, urging that Africa “does not want to be the breeding ground of a new Cold War”.
Africa has maintained neutrality on the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. About 25 countries either voted to abstain or did not vote at all on the UN resolution that condemned the war in Ukraine earlier this year.
Many African countries depend heavily on grain imports from Russia and Ukraine. Amid market shortages, Russia’s foreign minister has sought to portray the West as the villain, blaming it for rising food prices.
“I have come to say that Africa has suffered enough of the burden of history; that it does not want to be the breeding ground of a new Cold War, but rather a pole of stability and opportunity open to all its partners, on a mutually beneficial basis,” Macky Sall, the chairperson of AU and president of Senegal, told the General Assembly on Tuesday.
“We call for a de-escalation and a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine as well as for a negotiated solution to avoid the catastrophic risk of a potentially global conflict,” he said.
Sall emphasized that Africa is “a continent determined to work with all of its partners” to address the continent’s needs. More than 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity on a continent of 1.4 billion people, he said.
Given that Africa “pollutes the least and lags furthest behind in the industrialization process,” it should be allowed to exploit its oil and gas resources, Sall told the General Assembly.
While calling on the West to provide funding so that Africa can transition to cleaner sources of energy, he said such should not be considered aid.
Instead it should be given in global solidarity “in return for efforts made by developing countries to avoid the polluting patterns that have plunged the planet into the current climate emergency,” Sall said.
