Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has announced that Russia will encourage African countries to table their own development proposals for discussion at the Russia-Africa Summit happening now.

Mr Putin labelled This gesture, a vision for cooperation with Africa.

Russia is acclaimed to be playing catch-up on Africa’s development with its BRICS peers India and China and other rivals like the EU, Japan, Turkey, UK and the United States.

President Putin stated that Russia would bring resources and technology to Africa leaving the business and political leaders to determine how they are utilised.

“We expect that our African colleagues, representatives of the business community will come to Sochi with a solid package of proposals aimed at enhancing bilateral relations, while heads of Africa’s regional organisations will share their ideas as to how we could jointly develop our multilateral cooperation,” Mr Putin said in an interview with local TASS news agency on Tuesday.

He also said projects agreed upon could be launched right away, suggesting they would not be tied to undue bureaucracy and conditions that have made African governments frown at project financing from the west.

Culled from allafrica.com