The West is robbing developing countries and African nations in particular, Russia’s envoy to Kenya, Dmitry Maksimychev, told RT in an interview released on Monday. It is intentionally preserving price disparities to ensure the situation doesn’t change, he claimed.

Maksimychev said commodities produced in Africa “are priced much lower than the end product, which is often made in the West from the commodities imported from the developing world.” 

The West isn’t giving Africa a chance to accumulate enough capital for industrialization and economic growth, he said.

One example of “daylight robbery” cited by Maksimychev was tech prices, as developing countries pay twice as much as the West for the same goods.

The Russian envoy claimed the West doesn’t think of Africans as “equals.” Compared to them, “Russia is a true equal partner,” Maksimychev added. The West can’t provide that because they cannot change its “predatory nature,” so they act in a “neocolonial way,” he concluded.