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'Billions Donated to Kiev Could Have Helped Africa', Says French Politician

18:38, 17 September 2023

Samantha Arias

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Since Monday, around 8,500 people have arrived to the Italian island of Lampedusa, according to the UN migration agency. The Mediterranean country has raised a fierce debate in Europe on how to share responsibility for the tens of thousands of people reaching the continent each year.

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While the Italian island of Lampedusa is facing a large influx of African migrants, the urgency for Europe is to support the continent, not to finance the Ukrainian forces, has been declared on CNEWS by Nicolas Dupont-Aignant, president of the Debout la France party.

The money allocated to Kiev would be much better used for the development of the Maghreb and the Sahel region, while Africa is facing a demographic explosion which is leading to migratory pressure towards Europe, declared the former MP.

"The great peril of the 21st geopolitical century is not Russia at all, it is the doubling of the African population [...] We must stop the conflict in Ukraine, we must stop pouring money there [...] France must redistribute this money. Rather than delivering American weapons to kill Russians, I would prefer that these billions be used for the development of the Maghreb and the Sahel", he explained.

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Don't be the 'Poodle of the United States'

If France is no longer able to make its voice heard on Africa, it is also because the European country is now entirely aligned with the United States line, Dupont-Aignant also underlined.

"[Ex-President of France] Jacques Chirac had a role in Africa because he had a vision of the world inherited from De Gaulle, where France was not the poodle of the United States, where it expressed a vision of the peoples of the South. From the moment where Emmanuel Macron has abandoned all national independence, France no longer has anything to say to the world," explained the former MP.

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The same logic works with Ukraine, where Europe must stop playing into the hands of the United States, which seeks to weaken it, added the politician.

The question of a reduction in European aid to Kiev has come back to the table in recent days, following controversial comments from Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian President had in fact declared that the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe could take this reduction very badly, which would create "risks for the West in its own garden."