Russia is not ruling out the implementation of joint scientific and technical projects with China in African countries, as it believes that the experience of Beijing may be useful, Andrei Kemarsky, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of Africa, told Sputnik.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 18th December, 2018) Russia is not ruling out the implementation of joint scientific and technical projects with China in African countries, as it believes that the experience of Beijing may be useful, Andrei Kemarsky, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of Africa, told Sputnik.
The senior diplomat said that the volumes of Chinese-African cooperation certainly exceeded those of the Russian-African cooperation.
"There are certain consequences of the long period of decline that started in the early 1990s. Measures to remedy this situation are currently being taken. We are interested in exchanging the experience of cooperation with Africans, and there is something we can learn from Chinese partners. It seems like China, in turn, is also expressing interest in our cooperation with Africa, namely, in science, equipment, and high technologies promotion, where we already have good developments. We cannot rule out the emergence of conditions for joint projects," Kemarsky said.
On November 19, Vyacheslav Volodin, Russian lower chamber speaker, said that the Russian-African trade had grown by 26.1 percent since 2016, amounting to $10.5 billion in the first six months of 2018. He added that Russia had invested around $17 billion in Africa in 2003-2017.
