Russia writes off $23b African countries’ debts

Russia says it has written off $23 billion debts of African countries.

President Vladimir Putin announced this during the plenary session of the Russia-Africa Summit on Friday.

He said Russia was participating in efforts to relieve the debt burden of African countries, stressing “to date, the total amount of debt we have written off is 23 billion dollars”.

“According to the latest requests from African countries, we will allocate more than $90 million more for these purposes and their development,” he said.

This followed his earlier promise that Russia would give six African nations up to 50,000 metric tons of free grain in the next three to four months in spite of sanctions on Russian exports.