During his two-day visit to Benin, President Paul Kagame said concerns about Russia’s presence in Africa are “another problem we don’t need to have.”
“Russia or any other big power should not be our problem,” Kagame said during a press conference co-hosted by Benin’s President Patrice Talon, in the capital Cotonou, on Saturday, April 15.
“These big powers have their own issues to sort out, and they keep sucking in these small countries of ours,” he said.
“Russia has a right to be anywhere they need to be, legally, just as any other country has, to be anywhere – I mean those who come to Africa,” President Kagame said.
“You will hear people complain about China, about Russia…But how about them? What right do they have to be in Africa that others don’t have?”
The President stated that what Africa has to do is “just get together to identify what we need in terms of partnership and who offers what we need, and leave to them their own, other problems.”
On war on Ukraine
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, its origin, how it is being conducted, and more importantly, how it is going to end, Kagame said: “I have no idea.”
“So, I cannot start making choices or decisions about such things where I have no idea and no possibility of making an impact on the outcome. Even if I have a certain view, it doesn’t make sense because it has no impact, it can’t create any change.”
President Kagame added: “On the Russia situation or its presence in Africa or anywhere, I think big countries like Russia will find a way of sorting it out, while we are trying to sort out our own problems that affect us directly.”
