Mali has received 25,000 tons of humanitarian grain from Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced on Wednesday, adding that Russia would continue to help African nations address socioeconomic hardships.
The shipment was delivered through the port of Conakry in neighboring Guinea on January 6 and handed over to the authorities of the landlocked West African country three days later, according to the Russian official.
“This is the fourth delivery of much-needed Russian goods to the population today on a free basis. In total, 50,000 metric tons of wheat and over 22,000 metric tons of fertilizers were transferred to Mali through the Russian Ministry of Emergencies on June 7, June 18, and December 6, 2023,” she said.
The deliveries come in fulfillment of Moscow’s pledge to provide food assistance to African nations facing food insecurity, as part of an agreement announced last summer by President Vladimir Putin at the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.
Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev said late last year that up to 200,000 tons of free wheat would be supplied to six African countries: Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Eritrea.
Earlier this month, Russia’s ambassador to Eritrea, Igor Mozgo, unloaded 25,000 tons of food aid at the East African nation’s port of Massawa. Somalia received the same amount of wheat from Moscow last November. Burkina Faso, where Moscow recently reopened an embassy that had been closed since 1992, is expected to get a share of the humanitarian grains. Moscow’s ambassador to the former French colony, Alexey Saltykov, told officials in Ouagadougou last month that supplies would arrive in “the coming days.”
A shipment bound for CAR is said to have arrived in neighboring Cameroon and been milled into wheat flour before transfer to the former French colony. Zimbabwe is also set to take delivery of a 25,000-ton grain cargo that arrived in Mozambique’s port of Beira last week.
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