Levy

This is more than just a powerful photograph. In Moscow, Assimi Goïta of Mali 🇲🇱 sits with Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of Sudan 🇸🇩, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt 🇪🇬, and William Ruto of Kenya 🇰🇪. That’s the Sahel, the Nile Valley, and East Africa sitting around the same table. With the war in Sudan, tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Nile, and all the geopolitical struggles happening around the world, I find this picture fascinating. We often hear that Mali and the Sahel are isolated. But African diplomacy is much more complicated than people think. Something many people don’t know: when MINUSMA was withdrawing from Mali in 2023, Egypt pledged to donate equipment from its contingent in Timbuktu to the Malian army. That’s something I haven’t forgotten. And seeing Kenya’s president here is interesting too. In West Africa, we often associate Kenya and Liberia with the United States. Kenya is even a major non-NATO ally of Washington. Yet here is its president sitting with these African leaders in Moscow. I don’t know what they discussed, and I won’t pretend that a photograph tells the whole story. But one thing is clear to me: African countries have relationships and interests that go far beyond the divisions between Russia and the West. That is what makes this photograph so interesting.