For instance, five nations in the volatile Sahel region – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – solicited Moscow’s military support in 2018. The spread of militant Islamist extremism and other violence in Africa has created more openings for Russian military involvement. Again, I’m not saying the West is always sincere doing that, but that’s the official message – and they are not doing any of that.” … They insist on the importance of sovereignty and contrast that with the West, which is trying to impose its values, such as transparency, honest governance, anti-corruption legislation. “What they’re essentially doing is they’re contracting with African elites on a one-on-one basis. However, while the Soviets tried to sell socialist ideas of modernization in Africa, Russians today “are not offering any ideological vision,” he said. “Russia provides, as did the Soviet Union before, an alternative vision for African nations” based on “this common anti-Western critique,” said Maxim Matusevich, a history professor who directs Russian studies at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. Russia’s overtures in recent years offer cooperation without the “political or other conditions” imposed by Western countries, Putin has said. However, Africa does more business with other countries, notably China, its biggest trading partner in recent years. He said Russia exported $14 billion worth of goods and services and imported roughly $5 billion in African products. Trade between Russia and African countries has doubled since 2015, to about $20 billion a year, African Export-Import Bank President Benedict Oramah said in an interview last fall with Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency, cited by the Russia Briefing investment news site.
Sub-Saharan Africa's Import-Export Partners “Russia is clearly interested, in search of new economic markets and geopolitical influence in Africa,” said Tatiana Smirnova, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Quebec’s Centre FrancoPaix and an associate with the University of Florida’s Sahel Research Group.
Alrosa, the world’s largest diamond mining company, has pushed to expand operations in Angola and Zimbabwe, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Rusal is a company that excavates minerals for aluminum in Guinea and nuclear group Rosatom seeks uranium in Namibia. Businesses, including state-backed commercial interests, have invested heavily in security sectors, technology and industries that extract natural resources such as oil, gas, gold and other minerals. The 2019 summit produced contracts with more than 30 African countries to supply military armaments and equipment. Since at least 2007, especially in the last few years, Russia has been increasing military and other economic involvement in Africa. After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, it largely withdrew from the continent. Moscow has been building new ties and refreshing alliances forged during the Cold War, when the former Soviet Union supported socialist movements across Africa. The first, at the Black Sea resort town of Sochi, generated diplomatic agreements and billions of dollars in deals involving arms, energy, agriculture, banking and more, said the organizer, the Roscongress Foundation. “Rather, we are ready to engage in competition for cooperation with Africa.”Ī second summit is planned for St.
“We are not going to participate in a new ‘repartition’ of the continent’s wealth,” he said. Africa is a foreign policy priority, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the first Russia-Africa summit of political and business leaders in 2019. Those are the more obvious symbols of Russia’s resurgent presence on the continent. A statue unveiled in the Central African Republic last fall shows local soldiers, backed by Russian fighters, protecting civilians. Russian flags waved in Burkina Faso’s capital following January’s military coup in the West African nation. The former Soviet power has been rebuilding ties with Africa more quietly, strengthening economic and military cooperation, but also raising Western concerns about its tactics and goals there. Russia has drawn the world’s attention with its aggressive stance toward Ukraine.
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