Ahead of the 2nd Ministerial Conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum that was held in Cairo, Egypt from December 19˗20, 2025, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin spoke to TASS News Agency.

TASS: This year’s ministerial forum between Russia and Africa will be focusing on trade, the economy and investment. To what extent can efforts in these domains succeed without achieving lasting solutions to the security challenges the African continent is facing?

Sergey Vershinin: Of course, without overcoming the urgent challenges the continent is facing in terms of peace and security, the possibility of building a stable and enduring framework for promoting Africa’s socioeconomic, investment, infrastructure and technological development is hard to imagine.

Indeed, challenges do exist in this regard, and the way they affect the situation in Africa should not be underestimated. Primarily, this includes the threats of terrorism and extremism, cross-border crime, internal political crises, interethnic conflicts and confrontation between states. The situation in the Sahara and Sahel zone, on the Horn of Africa and in the Great Lakes region is especially challenging.

We are certain that there is a possibility to achieve effective and lasting solutions for these hotspots as long as Africans themselves play a leading role in this process and are guided exclusively by their interests.

In this regard, our approach consists of unconditionally respecting the sovereignty of African states, promoting the principles of mutual respect and equality, refraining from imposing ready-made solutions, and offering assistance in sectors and to the extent as requested by our African partners.

We have been unwavering in our commitment to the fundamental principle of African Solutions to African Problems, as well as the goal to Silence the Guns by 2030, as set forth in the African Union’s 2063 Agenda.

In keeping with Russia’s 2023 Foreign Policy Concept, Russia strives, among other things, to support the sovereignty and independence of African nations by offering them assistance in security and helping resolve and overcome armed conflicts on the African continent by enabling African countries to enhance their defence capabilities. Russia helps them build capacity for countering domestic and external threats, among which terrorism poses the greatest challenge.

That said, not everything depends on Africa alone. Just like during the era of Western colonialism, which gave rise to many challenges the continent is facing today, the region is exposed to a lot of outside pressure. Most crises involve the interests of extra-continental countries and transnational corporations, primarily the former colonial powers.

They continue siphoning away local resources and manipulating political processes. They exploit the financial and economic dependence of African countries and organisations to impose their own rules and draw them into the West’s reckless geopolitical ventures targeting Russia, China, etc.

The criminal actions by the Kiev regime and its sponsors pose an extremely serious threat not only to Africa but to the entire world. They have been working with the local terrorist groups and assisting them.

Among other things, they use these groups to terrorise civilians in certain countries of the Sahel region, and seek to undermine Russia’s interests and the interests of other countries by carrying out acts of sabotage.

We must counter this policy of confrontation by the West, which has been cynical in neglecting Africa’s security and development, by having the Global Majority unite its efforts to do away with the Western hegemony and neo-colonialism in any form on the continent.

Africans must have the ability to dispose of their natural resources on their own for achieving their socioeconomic development objectives instead of continuing to bear the burden of paying for the well-being of the United States, the European Union, NATO and its allies. In this regard, we will always be there for our African friends and ready to lend them a helping hand.

TASS: The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation 2023 says that the “Russian Federation intends to support further the establishment of Africa as a distinctive and influential centre of world development.” What does this mean in practice?

Sergey Vershinin: In fact, the Foreign Policy Concept has defined a set of priorities for developing bilateral and multilateral cooperation with the African continent.

We support our African friends’ efforts to implement large-scale plans outlined in Agenda 2063, a strategic framework adopted by the African Union. We are on Africa’s side in matters related to strengthening its collective sovereign voice internationally, based on the principles of the UN Charter in their entirety and interconnection.

We solidarise with the African countries’ striving to achieve a fair measure of representation in the UN Security Council in keeping with the general African position enshrined in the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration.

After the USSR-supported African countries achieved their historic goal, political independence, in the 1960’s, they are facing a no less important, nor, most likely, any less difficult task posed by modern times. The reference is to gaining a true and all-round economic, energy, and technological sovereignty.

The continent certainly has a potential equal to the mission: huge human resources, favourable demographic dynamics, vast markets, considerable mineral resources, and an increasingly prominent role in global production and distribution chains.

We see that the Africans are particularly interested in the unique Russian knowledge and best practices in various production sectors, knowledge amassed in recent years, as we learned the art of sovereign development based on our internal resources.

We are firmly committed to expanding trade and economic cooperation with Africa in several key areas, including civilian nuclear energy, outer space, pharmaceuticals, digitalisation of state and municipal governance, and the banking sector.

Russian economic operators are successfully implementing several projects, including the development of the Marine XII offshore field with a floating LNG production and storage facility in the Republic of the Congo, the construction of an oil products pipeline in the same republic, the construction of a Russian industrial zone and the El Dabaa nuclear power plant in Egypt, and others.

One of our priorities is to help Africa to become self-sufficient in food. We focus on creating stable stocks and localising the output of end products in the spirit of the AU’s Kampala Declaration, approved in January of this year. We transfer technologies and share best practices in the field of agronomy, fertiliser production, irrigation and fisheries.

In furtherance of the agreements reached by the 1st Russia-Africa Ministerial Meeting in 2024, we held an international conference on African food sovereignty in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in November of this year, which laid the foundation for implementing specific projects.     

There are broad prospects for cooperation in the use of subsurface resources with an eye to African states creating value-added products by processing their resources on the spot. The first forum in the context of the Russian-African Raw Materials Dialogue was devoted precisely to this task.

It was held at the Empress Catherine II St Petersburg Mining University, which has the necessary competencies in this field, in October of this year.