Dakar – African Union chief Macky Sall will visit Kyiv soon, Ukraine’s foreign minister said, adding that he hopes the trip will help step up pressure on Russia to end its invasion.
The war in Ukraine has threatened food security in many African countries by preventing exports of grain and fertiliser. Rising fuel and cereal costs are further straining vulnerable nations.
Sall, Senegal’s president and current AU chair, visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi this month to discuss the issue.
He did not visit Ukraine, but said he intended to.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday spoke to AU members via video-link and accused Russia of holding Africa hostage with its blockade.
ALSO READ | AU chair Sall aims to shake up African relations with the West
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he hoped Sall’s visit to Kyiv would pile pressure on Russia.
“I am convinced that President Macky Sall can play an important role as the current chairman of the African Union,” Kuleba said in an interview published on Thursday in the Senegalese newspaper Le Quotidien.
Ukraine hopes to provide Sall with the “necessary objective information to strengthen the voice of the African Union, in particular to ask Russia to stop the military aggression against Ukraine,” he added.
He did not confirm a date for the visit.
African leaders have expressed alarm at the effects of soaring grain prices and the blockade of Ukrainian ports.
Sall has also stressed the conflict’s impact on the supply of fertiliser, essential in parts of Africa.
ALSO READ | African Union head to speak to Putin Friday in Russia
A dozen African countries, including Senegal, rely on Russia and Ukraine for at least half of their wheat imports, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
But African governments are divided on their responses toward Russia.
Sall says he is seeking to maintain his country’s history of non-alignment.
In a recent interview with the French outlets France 24 and RFI, Sall denied being an “accomplice” of Russian aggression and said he condemned the invasion, recognising that there was an aggressor.
Follow African Insider on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Source: AFP
Picture: twitter/@Macky Sall
For more African news, visit Africaninsider.com
