Viewpoint

Iran Needs to Work Overtime to Regain Lost Influence in Africa

Date: 14 July 2023 - 21:55

News ID: ۱۱۷۲۰۱

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

“Africa is a continent with both human potentials and extraordinary natural potentials. The Europeans went there, killing, murdering and looting, taking advantage of uninformed people, and they even installed their own sculptures as liberators of those countries; one example was Zimbabwe... They conquered the country, exploited its resources, humiliated the people, took them as slaves, and made them miserable. They finally named the country after their own agents; to say the country is their belonging!”
These are remarks of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, when as President of Iran he had visited Zimbabwe in 1986 for the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and been given a red carpet welcome by President Robert Mugabe who liberated from the white apartheid rule of the tyrant Ian Smith his homeland which the British occupiers used to call Rhodesia, and then despite Anglo-American plots and pressures safeguarded its independence and cleared it of western vestiges, including the renaming of Salisbury as Harare.
Day before yesterday on Thursday when Hojjat al-Islam Seyyed Ibrahim Raisi broke the 13-year drought of Iranian presidential visits to Zimbabwe by landing at the airport named in honour of the Late Mugabe, he was greeted on the tarmac by his counterpart President Emmerson Mnangagwa, along with hundreds of children who saluted him by waiving photos of Ayatollah Khamenei and Martyr Qassem Soleimani, and chanting he famous revolutionary anthem “Salaam Farmandeh” (Salute O’ Commander) in the local language.
Raisi was greatly impressed at the respect for the Islamic Republic in Africa and the enthusiasm of African people on meeting Iranian leaders, and realized the opportunities missed by his predecessor in not visiting any African country despite 55 official visits abroad.
Earlier in Kenya and Uganda on the first two legs of his three-nation visit to Africa, the Iranian president came across several pleasant surprises, including local people well-versed in Farsi and the chanting in chorus by the exceptionally tall Maasai lion hunters of a tribute to Prophet Muhammad’s (SAWA) Vicegerent Imam Ali ibn Abi Taleb (AS) “Mowla Ali, Mowla Ali”.
No wonder, the Iranian president after signing 21 agreements during his three-day trip (5 in Kenya, 4 in Uganda, and 12 in Zimbabwe), remarked:
“Greater work needs to be done to expand relations with African states in political, economic and cultural fields more than ever. We believe that the world is not limited to the West. Iran’s foreign policy is based on engaging with the whole world.”
This means the Iranian ministries and state organizations, as well as the private sector should now work overtime to make up for the negligence of the past decade, during which several world countries that used to lag behind the Islamic Republic in its ventures in Africa, have significantly established their influence in the trade and economic sectors.