‘It is high time African countries engage as equal partners in global organisations, forums for international economic cooperation, and climate change, instead of being treated like “unequal cousins”.’
President Cyril Ramaphosa told this to the global community in his remarks during the closing ceremony at the France Summit for a New Global Financing Pact on Friday.
He added that African states should be viewed by global partners as sovereign nations and equal, not belittled and seen as beggars.
‘There should be a good measure of equality among sovereign nations. You know, recently, African countries decided to go and table a call for peace with Ukraine and Russia.
‘We raised several issues. Even as we were going to address an issue of the war, which has had a negative impact on the African continent with the rise in prices for food, and rising prices for fertilisers, we were clear that we were not going there to ask for a favour [from] both Ukraine and Russia.
‘We were going there to say open up the Black Sea channel so that the grains and the fertilisers could go into the world market. So, we were not on a begging mission even though we are in great need as a continent’, said an emphatic Ramaphosa.
‘I played a key role as chair of the African Union during Covid. We felt like we were beggars when it came to vaccine availability’, Ramaphosa added.
‘When we needed access to vaccines, the Northern Hemisphere countries had bought all the vaccines in the world, and they were hogging them. They didn’t want to release them at the time when we needed them most, and we felt like we were begging.’
Ramaphosa said that the small number of doses Africa had received felt like ‘droppings from the table’.
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