Dear African friends, dear Russophiles!
It is wonderful that Africa remembers its friendship with Russia and does not abandon it even in the current difficult circumstances. But in history and politics, the friendship of nations has not only emotional, but also geopolitical, ideological and economic grounds.
I will express my thoughts on the most important, in my opinion, problems and prospects of Africa, where Russian-African friendship could give the most significant fruits.
1. Building a multipolar world.
The era of Western hegemony is ending before our eyes; the unipolar world actually no longer exists. Instead, new poles, completely independent and sovereign, are emerging. Among them, Russia and China have already fully established themselves. India, the countries of the Islamic world and Latin America are joining the club of world majority, becoming more and more strongly as independent poles. All of them reject unipolarity and are in favor of multipolarity. Africa, a huge continent with incalculable wealth – human, natural, cultural, economic – should become an independent pole. So Africa’s task is to become a full-fledged pole of the multipolar world. And Russia, which is at the forefront of the multipolar process, is ready to help in every possible way.
2. Pan-African unity.
None of the African countries has the scale to become such a pole on its own. To be a subject of a multipolar world, the Pan-African project must be revitalized at a new stage. Only by uniting their potential will the peoples and countries of Africa be able to gain full sovereignty and independence. Today, more than ever before, the Pan-African idea is vital, which would unite the peoples beyond post-colonial borders. And in this regard, Russia, which itself has embarked on the path of Eurasian integration, is ready to help as much as possible.
3. The profound decolonization of African consciousness.
Having gained independence from yesterday’s Western colonizers, African countries retained many features of the previous shameful era of subjugation and slavery. The worldview, scientific ideas, philosophy, culture of African countries are still oriented toward the societies of Europe. This is how former masters and enslavers continue to rule their former colonies and also transfer to Africa the diseases and problems of their own societies. Military and political colonization is a thing of the past, but the cultural-technological and geopolitical dependence of African countries on the West persists and sometimes even increases. Only now new mechanisms are used for this purpose – economic bribery, network structures (like those created by speculator and international terrorist George Soros), and technological dependence. It is time to start a new stage of the African people’s liberation struggle. And above all, it is about returning to its traditional values, to the cultures and customs of indigenous African peoples. This can be seen most vividly in the struggles of such colorful figures as Kemi Seba, Mbombog Bassong, Franklin Nyamsi, who defend the original African Logos. Since Russia has now sharply broken with Western civilization and is actively searching for its own Russian Logos, here too our interests and priorities coincide.
4. Fourth political theory.
Liberation from colonial clichés affects African politics directly. The white colonizers, while formally withdrawing their direct rule, conserved a legacy of their political philosophy that paralyzed the path of free political development in African countries. Therefore, even after decolonization, African states followed the path of the colonizers by choosing one of the modern Western political ideologies – liberalism, socialism or nationalism. And all of them have brought Africa’s political regimes to a standstill, created crises and disasters. In fact, the three political ideologies have become the levers of external governance in the new political environment. This must be overcome by turning to the Fourth Political Theory – beyond liberalism, socialism and nationalism. And I am very happy that my book, The Fourth Political Theory, is being actively studied by intellectuals in West Africa, and intellectuals in East Africa, the Horn of Africa have recently translated it into Somali. It is now available to many readers from Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
In my opinion, highlighting these four areas is intended to be a way to intensify Russian-African relations. Of course, economic partnership, cooperation in the sphere of security and arms, and joint strategy in the sphere of natural resources are extremely important. But these directions, about which specialists and responsible persons will surely say a lot at our Forum, should be integrated into a more thorough and fundamental context of civilizational cooperation.
All the best to you! I hope that this Forum will be historic precisely because it will lay the foundations of partnership between two distinctive civilizations – Russian and African as fully sovereign and distinctive poles.