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Indonesia wants to be part of Africa’s economy ‘success story’, says FM
Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi met her Gambian counterpart Mamadou Tangara and Guinean Transportation Minister Felix Lamah on two separate occasions in Jakarta on Tuesday, during which she reaffirmed numerous bilateral agreements between Indonesia and the two African countries.
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Closer ties: Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi dances alongside other performers at the opening ceremony of the Indonesia-Africa Forum (IAF) in Bali in 2018. (JP/Agnes Anya)
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oreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi met her Gambian counterpart Mamadou Tangara and Guinean Transportation Minister Felix Lamah on two separate occasions in Jakarta on Tuesday, during which time she reaffirmed numerous bilateral agreements between Indonesia and the two African countries.
These agreements, primarily revolving around multilateral trade and intents to cooperate in the field of transportation, were a reflection of Indonesia’s eagerness to “become a part of a success story of Africa's economic development”, said Retno.
Despite Africa being a nontraditional partner of Indonesia, Jakarta had paid special attention to Africa, a bond rooted in the historical Asian-African or the Bandung Conference in 1955 that established the two continents' shared solidarity against colonialism. Since early 2000s, Indonesia had amped up its African cooperation by multiplying their trade value fivefold to US$11.7 billion, as Retno previously wrote in 2017 that “some of the largest contributors to the annual Trade Expo Indonesia hail from Africa”.
In the meeting with Tangara, Retno welcomed Gambia’s role as the host of the upcoming Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit this year.
“Indonesia supports Gambia’s efforts to deliver beneficial cooperation for all the OIC countries, which included the fulfillment of the education rights of the Afghan women as well as works to fortify [the countries’] capacity in agriculture,” Retno said in a press release on Tuesday. The statement also said that Indonesia has affirmed its intention to renovate the Agricultural Rural Farmers Training Centre (ARFTC) in Gambia, which Jakarta built in 1996.
The Tuesday meeting also paid special attention to the follow-up of the initiatives suggested at the Indonesia-Africa Forum 2018 and the Indonesia-Africa Infrastructure Dialogue 2019.
Additionally, Gambia conveyed its readiness to progress the Preferential Trade Agreement between Indonesia and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a cooperation pact that had been in the pipeline since 2017.
