Africa flexes its diplomatic muscles – POLITICO

Ivor Ichikowitz is an industrialist and philanthropist. He is the chair of the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which paid for the installation of the Mandela mural in Kyiv.

In the wake of this year’s Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, there are some who will point to both the drop in attendance by heads of state and the Black Sea Grain Initiative’s collapse as evidence that the inaugural African Peace Initiative was doomed before it even began.

They would be wrong.

When the initiative was first conceived, it seemed a mission impossible. It would be futile, cynics agreed, to get Franco and Anglophone Africa — to say nothing of the north and south — to achieve consensus on anything.

Yet, seven heads of state actually did. And in June, a group representing these ostensible polar African opposites set out for Kyiv and St. Petersburg, looking to speak to the leaders of the two countries locked in an implacable war. Neither Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy nor Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed them out of hand.

These African leaders wanted to find ways of ending a war that now threatens the lives of millions of Africans. Before February 2022, few truly understood Ukraine’s role as the breadbasket of the world and, equally, few appreciated Russia’s role as the main source of fertilizers. And without them, catastrophe will strike the fragile African continent.

But these leaders didn’t go with a begging bowl asking for grain either. Ukraine had offered free grain before — an offer that was delicately and discreetly declined.

Putin’s scuppering of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and his offer of free grain to the very countries that have historically received grain from the World Food Program isn’t a solution either.

Rather, the Black Sea Grain Initiative must be reinstated, and African countries must be given the right to pay for the grain they need at reasonable market prices  — not placated by handouts that are simply weaponized acts of charity.

And as Africa’s leaders pointed out, it’s vital the 200,000 tons of Russian fertilizer currently held in European ports be released for delivery, and further obstacles to Russian grain exports to Africa be removed, so that the whole Black Sea package can be resumed.

In their meetings, Africa’s leaders spoke honestly with both leaders, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and head of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki underlining that the war needs to end. The continent’s leaders also outlined some steps to achieve this, emphasizing the moral importance of protecting children caught in in war, as well as the need to exchange prisoners of war.

However, there are some critics who seemingly can’t understand that engaging in dialogue with Russia doesn’t make one complicit — no more than pushing for peace can be seen as doing the West’s bidding. True friends speak the truth; they aren’t aligned. And peace can only come from constructive dialogue — not from being complicit in the acts of one side or the other.

Thus, the African Peace Initiative isn’t dead — in fact, far from it. It has even spawned more initiatives, including the Saudi Arabia-hosted peace forum held this month.

After all, it matters not who achieves the all-important breakthrough first — there’s no particular reward for that — only that whoever is involved is making a real contribution to ending this horrible war and, in our particular case, doing the best for the continent of Africa.

And with this initiative, African leaders are making that contribution, proving the age-old truth known by all successful negotiators that one has to be authentic, truthful and have good faith.

Furthermore, the end result must also be to the benefit of everyone — not just the people of Ukraine who have survived over 18 months of living hell, or the hundreds of thousands of heartbroken mothers and widows of Russian conscripts.

The reason very few wanted to even consider the African Peace Initiative might succeed in the first place is because its was unthinkable: African leaders daring to believe they have a right to find solutions rather having their agency taken by proxy and their futures determined by foreign powers — both former and neocolonial.

The African Peace Initiative is thus an inflection point for the continent. It shows Africa can take charge of its own destiny, despite the incredible international pressure placed upon its leaders to take sides.

It also builds on the continent’s history too. In the 1980s, French businessman Jean-Yves Ollivier, now chair of the Brazzaville Foundation, had similarly embarked on what many thought was a fruitless endeavor — trying to get apartheid South Africa to begin talking to the frontline states, its neighbors. There were, of course, missteps along the way, but Olivier persevered and, ultimately, in 1987, negotiated the biggest prisoner exchange up until then.

The process also achieved something far greater than that though, paving the way for further talks between parties that, until that time, had refused to engage with each other. And in February 1991, then South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk finally lifted the ban on the liberation movements and freed Nelson Mandela from jail, where he had sat for an unconscionable 27 years.

This was a significant victory for parallel diplomacy — one that must have frustrated the professional diplomats in much the same way the African Peace Initiative has now unsettled those who shout peace from the rooftops but act in a way that belie their words.

We have finally found our voice, and we are using it.