Russia’s return to Africa
Under Putin’s leadership, the country has once again become a major force on the continent
In October 2019 around 40 African heads of state attended the first Russia-Africa Summit and Economic Forum, held on the initiative of President Vladimir Putin at the former Olympic village in Sochi.
The summit’s final declaration set out ambitious objectives — Russia aimed to double trade with Africa within five years — and called for a second summit to be held in 2022, probably at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, seat of the African Union.
This confirmed Russia’s return to Africa, and its renewed interest in the continent as part of an overall foreign policy strategy.
“The development and strengthening of mutually beneficial ties with African countries and their integration associations is one of Russia’s foreign policy priorities,” Putin said.
Soviet influence in Africa for many years followed the progress of decolonisation and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It became a foreign policy issue for the Kremlin in the 1950s, as the Belgian, British, French, and Portuguese empires began to collapse.
Beginning in the mid1950s, the Soviet Union gave massive economic and military support to Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and took an interest in other national liberation movements.
From 1956 the Soviet Union forged close links with the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria fighting the French.
The Soviet special forces centre at Perevalnoe, in Crimea, trained anti-apartheid fighters from Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC), the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo).
The Soviet Union also deployed soft power, establishing the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University (now the People’s Friendship University of Russia), named after the Congolese independence leader. It was created in 1960 to provide higher education to Third World students. It became an integral part of the Soviet cultural offensive in nonaligned countries.
But Moscow’s interest in Africa was diminished following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the course of the next two decades, post-Soviet Russia showed little interest in the continent and only in the late 2010s did the Kremlin once again begin to play a greater geopolitical role; sub-Saharan Africa re-emerged in Russian political discourse as trade and diplomatic traffic increased.
Moscow revived its associations with Africans who had studied in the Soviet Union and launched initiatives to lure more students to Russia. It rekindled relations with Soviet-era clients like Mozambique and Angola and forged new ties with other countries.
Under Putin’s leadership, the country has once again become a major force on the continent. The Kremlin aspires to pull African states into the network of geopolitical alliances that it has built to cast itself as a revitalized great power, international mediator, and effective counterterrorism partner.
Part of Russia’s current engagement with Africa is military. The Russian army and Russian private military contractors linked to the Kremlin have expanded their global military footprint in Africa, seeking basing rights in a half dozen countries and inking military cooperation agreements with 28 African governments, according to an analysis by the Washingtonbased Institute for the Study of War.
The Wagner Group – a military enterprise connected to the Russian state –expanded its actions south of the Sahara. U.S. officials estimate that around 400 Russian mercenaries are operating in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Moscow recently delivered military equipment to support counterinsurgency operations in northern Mozambique.
Russia is also now the largest arms exporter to Africa, accounting for 39 per cent of arms transfers to the region in 2013-2017.
Russia also sees an opportunity to boost trade with Africa and mitigate the negative economic consequences of its deteriorating relationship with the West after sanctions were imposed on Moscow in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea.
Moscow tripled its trade with Africa from $6.6 billion in 2010 to $18.9 billion in 2018. Russia also broadened its economic strengths beyond arms sales, adding investment in oil, gas, and enhancing nuclear power across the continent, while also importing diamonds from the CAR, bauxite from Guinea, and platinum from Zimbabwe.
Times have changed since the Soviet Union’s efforts to counter Western imperialism in Africa through Marxist ideology.
Russia’s foreign policy today has no such ideological ambitions, yet its narrative continues to stress opposition to Western interference in the domestic politics of African states, be it through the promotion of democracy and human rights or military interventions.
Many African leaders have therefore welcomed Russia’s renewed interest, because it aligns with several African political, security and economic objectives.
Russia’s overtures in Africa also enable African governments to play the United States and Russia off each other: If Washington presses too hard on democracy and human rights, African nations can threaten to move closer to Moscow.