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Iohannis: Senegal is Romania's traditional partner in West Africa
Senegal is Romania's traditional partner in West Africa, President Klaus Iohannis wrote on Thursday on X (formerly Twitter).
He specified that he had a "comprehensive" dialogue with his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall, stressing that the two countries have a diplomatic relationship of 58 years.
"We are determined, at the highest level, to enhance bilateral cooperation in areas of common interest and initiate joint projects in fields such as crisis management, education, research and innovation, digital infrastructure, agriculture, and food," the head of the Romanian state wrote.
President Klaus Iohannis said that by the tour to Kenya, Tanzania, Cape Verde and Senegal that ends on Thursday, he "put" Romania back on the African radar.
"I could say, without exaggeration, that this tour has put Romania back on the African radar. We have restored what was almost lost, an extremely valuable relationship between Romania and its African partners. This strategy will not only have positive practical consequences for Romania and for the countries we visited, but will also have very concrete consequences for the relationship between the European Union and the African countries, the relationship between the European Union and the African Union," said the Romanian president in a joint press conference with his Senegalese counterpart, Macky Sall.
According to president Iohannis, "it is obvious that our closest regional partner is Africa". "There are phenomenal opportunities and it would be a huge mistake to neglect this opportunity for good cooperation," the head of state stressed.
He added that "in recent decades, the whole world has realised the opportunities that lie in working with Africa".
Beyond the economic relationship, the president said, "we can intervene together to keep the peace or bring back the peace".
Iohannis said that for Romania this relationship has a "very special" specificity. He evoked the period when our country offered scholarships and had economic relations with African countries.
"Unfortunately, in the decades following the Revolution in our country, this relationship was almost neglected. I realized that a strategic error was made in Romanian foreign policy and I came up with corrective measures, I came up with a new strategy for Africa that is especially aimed at Romania's traditional partners in Africa, such as, in this specific case, Senegal," Klaus Iohannis said.
He pointed out that such a strategy, "of extraordinary weight", cannot be implemented "by correspondence".
"In order to give weight to this strategy and to show that Romania is very serious and very committed to reinvigorating these partnerships, I decided to make an African tour that today took us to Senegal and here is where this tour ends," said president Iohannis.
Thursday was the last day of the Romanian head of state's tour of African states.