Uganda welcomes the search for an alternative to the SWIFT payment system in order to counter blackmail and politicization of financial payments by the West, Ugandan Foreign Minister Jeje Odongo told Sputnik.
"So an alternative to the existing SWIFT is something welcome and something that we should be able to examine so that, as Africa, we have options. You can use SWIFT, or you can use what the Russians are developing so that the blackmail, the politicization of financing is something we can deal with by having options," Odongo said on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
He noted that the West actually blackmails African countries if it does not agree with their political course.
"If you have, in their view, political issues they do not agree with, that conflict or that disagreement does not only stay there, it migrates quickly into availability of resources for development for you, and means of payment, such services, which you may get denied, particularly if they imagine that you have association or links with the Russian authorities," Odongo added.