By: Zahid Jadwat

An African analyst has warned against African countries getting involved in the increasingly tense row between the West and Russia over its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

In an interview on Radio Islam, Dr Mustafa Mheta, Head of the Africa Desk at the Media Review Network, said African leaders need to focus on the continent’s development.

“We call upon the African Union to warn the people of Africa never to get involved in senseless wars that have nothing to do with them and… they’ll just end up being used as fodder. We don’t want to lose our people in that way. We need all our human resources to focus on developing our continent,” he said.

“This war brings into relevance the non-alliance movement. I think Africa should revive the non-aligned position that it has always [held] in the past, even during the Cold War.

Dr Mheta argued that African soldiers who participated in WWI and WWII returned with nothing more than bronze medals while their “White counterparts were rewarded by land being given to them. They were given vast tracts of land in the colonies”.

“Of course, this is a new Cold War emerging and it is already rolling. Africa really needs to be non-aligned. We don’t need to involve ourselves with such kinds of wars. We can’t repeat what happened in the First World War… Second World War… where our grandfathers were taken to fight in these senseless wars and when they come back… nothing. They would just give them bronze medals to show that they fought in the First and Second World Wars,” he said.

Listen to the full interview here: