23 000 Tonnes Of Russian Fertiliser En Route To Zimbabwe
Uralchem Group, a Russian fertiliser manufacturer, has reportedly fully loaded a humanitarian shipment of over 23 000 tonnes of fertilisers for Zimbabwe.
According to Sea News, the consignment was loaded onto a vessel in the ports of Riga, Latvia, and Ghent, Belgium, and has started its journey to the port of Beira in Mozambique.
From Beira, the shipment, comprising bulk loads of potash and NPKS fertilizers, will be transported to Zimbabwe by land.
The shipment is facilitated by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which has chartered a vessel to transport the consignment as part of UNCTAD-led efforts.
Uralchem Group will reportedly cover the sea freight and other delivery costs.
The delivery for Zimbabwe is the Group’s fourth donation in a series of humanitarian shipments of its fertilisers to Africa.
According to Sea News, to date, Uralchem Group has dispatched over 100 000 tonnes of fertilizers to Africa free of charge.
More than 77 000 tonnes of this amount was shipped from ports and warehouses in the European Union in cooperation with WFP to Malawi, Kenya and now to Zimbabwe.
Russia has been involved in providing aid and assistance to various African countries since the days of the wars of independence from the 1960s to the 1970s.
Since then, Russian aid to Africa has been on development projects, humanitarian assistance, and collaboration in areas such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, and natural resources.
The intention behind these initiatives is to strengthen political, economic, and cultural ties between Russia and the world’s second-most populous continent.
Critics say Africa has a leadership crisis that makes the continent rely on handouts from other countries when it is endowed with abundant natural resources.
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