diplomacy
Federal Foreign Office: Leopard emoji causes trouble in Africa
“Diplomatic fiasco”? The Foreign Office has received criticism for a tweet. photo
© Demy Becker/dpa
The Federal Foreign Office in Berlin tweeted a comment on the Russian Foreign Minister’s visit to South Africa – using an animal emoji. This backfires.
A tweet by the Federal Foreign Office on the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to South Africa has met with criticism. The post on the AA’s English-language Twitter account read: “Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov is in Africa not to see (leopard emoji), but to bluntly claim that Ukraine’s partners “want to destroy everything Russian”. The tweet refers to Lavrov’s allegations on Monday in South Africa that the West was at war with Russia in Ukraine.
Ebba Kalondo, spokeswoman for African Union (AU) leader Moussa Faki, asked the AA on Twitter if Africa’s people and animals were a joke to the German government. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) did not look at any animals during her visit to Ethiopia in mid-January, Kalondo wrote. According to numerous other comments, Africa is more than just a safari continent.
Spreading “appalling clichés” to score geopolitical points will not win Germany any friends, tweeted Zainab Usman, director of the US Africa Carnegie program. Other commentators called the AA tweet a diplomatic fiasco.
A post by political blogger John Aravosis suggested that AA may have been making a covert joke about the Leopard main battle tanks that Germany is now using to support Ukraine in the war against Russia.
The AA tweet of January 24 had been viewed almost two million times, shared almost 2,700 times and commented on more than 600 times as of Thursday morning.