Why Russia-Africa Youth Public Forum Promises Rapprochement & Enhanced Cooperation
14:42 GMT 26.07.2022 (Updated: 12:53 GMT 10.11.2022)
© Sputnik / Sergey Pyatakov
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The three-day forum started in Moscow on July 26. It brought together representatives of youth organizations from Russia and Africa with the aim of strengthening friendship and building priority partnerships in various areas, from education to joint start-ups.
Russia is returning to Africa, seeking to revive and enhance cooperation with the continent’s countries with youth programs at the forefront, according to Grigory Petushkov, chairman of the National Council of Youth and Children's Associations of Russia.
Russia's initiatives in this field are backed and funded by the Presidential Grant Foundation.
"The future belongs to the youth and youth organizations; these are no mere slogans, this is the reality," Petushkov explained. "The more African youth will learn about us, the more efforts are made to establish friendship ties among the youth of our countries, the brighter and more understandable [our relations] will be. And everyone will find a niche meeting his/her interests: education, culture, sport, or ecology, politics, and youth policy."
Judging from questions voiced by the forum’s African participants, the aforementioned topics are of utmost interest, the official claimed.
Similarly, Petushkov admitted that the intensity of Russo-African interaction in the field of joint youth programs has decreased considerably over the past 30 years compared to the USSR's Africa initiatives.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union forged close relationships with many African nations by supporting the continent's de-colonization efforts and national liberation movements. Over this period, the USSR inked cooperation treaties with at least 37 African countries and provided the continent with economic aid for agricultural development, educational programs, healthcare and infrastructure.
26 July 2022, 10:53 GMT
West's Resistance to Russo-African Cooperation
According to Petushkov, Russia should articulate and promote its position on traditional values, human rights and a multipolar world order for African youths. This task has taken on new importance as the United States and its allies exert pressure on African states in an apparent bid to preserve a unipolar order unleashed on the world after the collapse of the USSR.
"We must show our point of view as an alternative to the United States and its satellites," he said. "And the coolest thing that we see today is that African youth is not only ready to listen to our point of view, but they hear it, and they have actually adhered to it. And they are ready to take an active part.” He also opined that “this interest will be even greater [in the future]."
In March 2022, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit organization founded by the former UK prime minister, lamented the fact that during a March 2 UN vote a whopping 17 African nations "voted against or abstained from condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine", breaking with western countries. According to the think tank, this shows that "the UK, Europe and the United States cannot take African support for granted," at a time when Russia "has proved so capable of expanding its influence on the continent so quickly."
The West's attempts to hinder Russo-African cooperation are nothing new, according to Pavel Shevtsov, the deputy head of Russia’s Rossotrudnichestvo government agency which oversees Commonwealth of Independent States affairs, compatriots living abroad, and international humanitarian cooperation.
22 July 2022, 06:45 GMT
Shevtsov noted that the West’s conduct and rhetoric towards Russia have remained largely unchanged over the last 100-150 years, adding that both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union had to deal with western pressure and learnt how to overcome it.
When it comes to enhancing cooperation with African states, Russia can use the experience and best practices accumulated by the Soviet Union, according to Shevtsov.
"We are actively enhancing ties in various areas… [T]he [Russian] Ministry of Education, Rosmolodezh [Federal Agency for Youth Affairs], and Rossotrudnichestvo are doing a great job," said Shevtsov. "[Rossotrudnichestvo] is an agency responsible for a fairly big number of our centers in Africa. We interact, develop various educational and youth projects [in the continent]. We are engaging Russian university graduates and non-governmental organizations and we see that these efforts have proven effective."
Russia's success in building mutual trust and partnerships with African nations has manifested itself during Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's trip to the continent, according to Shevtsov: "We see the warm welcome that is given to our minister of foreign affairs," he said. "And we see frank conversation [between Russian officials] and the leaders of African countries about why we are now taking these steps."
Russia, South Africa & BRICS
Russia employs various platforms to establish close ties with its African counterparts. One of them is BRICS – an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – a group of major emerging economies.
"This [work] is very important and this is one of the reasons why we're here," explained Raymond Matlala, chairman of the South African BRICS Youth Association (SABYA), who is taking part in the Russia-Africa Youth Public Forum in Moscow. "In fact, two weeks ago we hosted bilateral discussions between South Africa and Russia, where we looked at about four topics [including] education, youth, entrepreneurship, leadership in creative industries."
BRICS’ youth organizations provide recommendations to the platform's leaders as to what issues are seen as most urgent and important by young people.
14 July 2022, 16:45 GMT
Matlala noted that South Africa will host the Africa BRICS Youth Forum in the next two months. The event will bring together BRICS nations and African countries in order to discuss issues concerning a multipolar world order, as well as sustainable development for the people of Africa and the world, the SABYA chairman emphasized.
These forums are especially important as they help bust disinformation and negative narrative spread by western mainstream media about the political situation in the world and ongoing conflicts, according to Matlala. The West's campaign to smear Russia is one glaring example, he remarked. No matter how hard the mainstream press tries to vilify Russia, when one comes to the country and learns about the situation on the ground, one realizes that the western narrative is not true, the SABYA chairman concluded.
