Along with Rex Tillerson’s visit to Africa, the Russian foreign minister is also on the continent.
Sergei Lavrov began a tour early this week with five African countries on the program, Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
The Russian foreign minister arrived in Addis Ababa on Friday evening, 9 March, a few hours before his American counterpart left.
Rex Tillerson and Sergei Lavrov were both on the African continent in early March, but there was no meeting, quite the contrary, as Pierre Yves Vircoulon, explains. “Their travel calendars are carefully avoided. The only country they visit is Ethiopia,” seat of the African Union.
And again, “at different times”.
The two men talk a lot about economics and economic interests with their African partners, but not between them.
According to the researcher, we are “in a kind of mini-cold war between Moscow and the United States”. And, as in the Cold War era, “the two capitals are trying to find or consolidate allies in Africa” and “replay, a little, on the African theater the cold war of the 1980s”.
In this context, “it is not a coincidence” if the head of the Russian diplomacy began his visit with Zimbabwe, then chained on Angola and Mozambique.
So many countries “with which Moscow had very important relations at the time of the cold war”.
