On December 12, 2023, the Primakov Centre began the Africa Week, organized by the center in collaboration with the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The first day of the Africa Week was started with a welcome speech of Andrey A. Tokarev, Ph.D., Head of the Centre for Southern Africa Studies of the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. During his speech, he addressed the number of issues currently faced by the African Union, including the climate changes, the changes in power within the states (for example, the membership of Burkina Faso, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Sudan was suspended by the African Union for political reasons). However, Andrey Aleksandrovich emphasized that we could do a lot to rectify this situation:
“Our relationship with Africa is a historical partnership stemming from anti-colonial struggles. We are respected for not having had colonies”.
The very foundation for opening embassies that would establish direct lines for cooperation.
Due to disintegrating factors, Africa remains the least integrated region in the world, despite the fact that the first integration unions were established back in the colonial period, as told to us by Nadezhda Khokholkova, Ph.D., Senior Research Fellow, The Center for History and Cultural Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In 2002, the Organisation of African Unity was transformed into the African Union, with the goal of forming the African community by 2030 based on eight leading unions that had already achieved various forms of integration, from preferential trade zones to a common market. Yaroslav Glukhov, PhD student, Junior Researcher, The Centre for Global and Strategic Studies, Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, identified the main reasons hindering the integration process: the absence of a roadmap for political federalization, historical memory of conflicts between the countries, diversity of the peoples, languages, and ways of life, and the elite competition. However, the researcher also drew the audience`s attention to the following:
“…Creating various integration unions in Africa is a trend that we have been observing since the independence of states on this continent. The complex intertwining of these unions is the sphere of interest, or the sphere of activity, where approaches from both the economic, geographic, and historical aspects are important”.
All the participants of the meeting were able to learn a lot of new things by talking to the experts from the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Photo: Galina Razzhivina
