African ambassadors stress the importance of cooperation with Ukraine
Ukraine has set out to more actively pursue its interests on the African continent. One of the things that confirm this was a roundtable with African ambassadors, recently organized by the Interregional Staff Management Academy (ISMA). The participants discussed the efforts African countries have made in the area of international relations and international law in order to become full-fledged members of world processes, ensure decent living standards for their citizens, and promote cooperation with other states, including Ukraine.
As one of the discussants, Africa researcher Ruslan Harbar, noted, last July Verkhovna Rada put up a 20-member parliamentary group headed by Ihor Alekseyev and Oksana Bilozir for the development of cooperation between this country and African states. According to Mr. Hrabar, the next step in revitalizing the Ukrainian-African dialog should be the establishment of the Center for Economic, Scientific, Technological, and Cultural Cooperation between Ukraine and the African states as an international non-governmental association. Mr. Hrabar said the center could be officially registered within a few months. This project has found considerable support in some African countries, including Sudan, where it is backed by the graduates of Ukrainian universities, Mr. Hrabar said.
Incidentally, Ukrainian diplomats consider Sudan a promising area for cooperation. Significantly, Sudanese Ambassador Ibrahim Al-Bushira Otman Al-Kabashi flew specially from Moscow to attend the ISMA roundtable.
On the other hand, cooperation with the countries of Africa, the world’s poorest continent, involves great risks, which Ukrainian specialists who worked there in Soviet times know only too well. According to Delarey van Tonder, Ambassador of the South African Republic to Ukraine, Africa’s share in the total number of the Earth’s poorest population increased from 25% to 30% in the 1990s. The share of African countries in the global trade turnover has been plummeting since the 1960s and now accounts for a mere 2% of the overall international trade. This figure will fall to a miserable 1.2% if South Africa is deleted. The African countries’ debt, estimated at $159 billion in 1997, rose to over $200 billion in 2000. As is known, the UN is now debating the HIV/AIDS problem. The BBC claims this disease has orphaned more than 11 million children in Africa. The continent also suffers from tuberculosis, malaria, Ebola fever, natural calamities, as well as civil wars and totalitarian regimes.
The African Union (founded, incidentally, at the suggestion of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi) and successor to the Organization of African Unity, as well as the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) program are intended to help combat all these disasters. The African Union has a structure partially patterned on the EU (with a lower level of integration) and considers combating the threat of terrorism as one of its goals. It is planned to set up in Algeria a special center to address this problem.
As to the future of African dictatorships, now in the spotlight after the resignation of Liberia’s President Charles Taylor, the doyen of African ambassadors in Ukraine and head of Algeria’s diplomatic mission Cherif Chihi told The Day’s correspondent that AU member states had resolved not to recognize the regimes that came to power as a result of military coups. “All countries are exerting pressure on such regimes,” Ambassador Chihi said. He pointed out in this connection the special role of NEPAD’s so-called Peer Review Mechanism, which sets provides for responsibility, mutual control, and accountability.
What can serve as an example of how the new mechanisms of responsibility function in Africa are the developments in Guinea-Bissau over the past two weeks. That country’s military recently toppled the lawfully- elected president and former opposition leader, Kumba Yala, because the latter had dissolved parliament and put off fresh elections several times. The military announced it was ready to hand over power to a caretaker government and continue the required consultations with the leaders of other Western African states. Meanwhile, President Kumba Yala thanked the military for a bloodless coup and said he supported the idea of forming a government of national unity and holding elections.
