Russia’s Nefarious Aims in Africa

             While the world is focused on impending war sparked by Russian imperial dreams in eastern Europe, Vladimir Putin has his eyes set on Africa, and his aims are not to develop the continent’s economies and its people, but rather to get all he can from it.

            After the Soviet Union fell apart in the early 1990s, Russia pulled back from Africa for a while, but like China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin never lost sight of what Africa and its member states offered on many levels.  Gradually, Russia worked its way back to partnerships on the continent different from what it had offered in the past in many ways.  For example, this time Russia was not outwardly pushing a Cold War competition and ideological recruitment per se.  However, Putin and his government did favorably compare its more pragmatic aims in its African partnerships as opposed to those of the United States.

            While the Obama and Biden Administrations promoted American ideals such as fighting climate change, which challenged African fossil fuel industries, Russia was handing out debt relief and selling arms – something African leaders were much more interested in hearing about and receiving.  The Trump Administration largely focused its US-Africa trade policy on countering China’s Africa ambitions.  U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all visited Africa; Donald Trump did not.  Actually, while those presidential visits were substantial gestures of interest, for the most part, all four U.S. presidents did not regularly attend US-Africa conferences such as the annual African Growth and Opportunity Act Ministerials, unlike the Russian and Chinese leaders, who more directly engaged African leaders whom they treated as colleagues.  How many times have African leaders come to see American presidents and been shunted off to lesser officials?  Would an American president accept visiting an African country and only meeting with the Vice-President or Foreign Minister?

American and Western governments have long pressed African governments to observe human rights and good governance, tying economic aid to their implementation of these principles.  Russia, as well as China, are totalitarian governments that would prefer to deal with African strongmen with whom they can make fast deals even if such compacts violate national or international law.  The concept of allowing legislatures, courts and the media to examine government actions and comment on them unfavorably is anathema to both countries as it is to many African leaders.  Thus, Russia and China sing a song of partnership that suits the ears of the more receptive of their African counterparts.

By the late 1990s, Russia expanded its partnerships in the region, finding common cause first with South Africa, its partner in the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), primarily on opposition to NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo and support for a multipolar order.  South Africa, now a donor nation like its BRICS partners, sees itself as the preeminent African player on the world stage, and the Russians know how to cultivate these ambitions.

Russia has forgiven debt in Angola and Mozambique, due in part to former military arrangements, winning favor with the governments of those countries. It sold arms to Sudan and Ethiopia, which created the foundation for lasting security partnerships.  In fact, arms sales are a major revenue earning sector for Russia.  According to an October 2021 report by the Congressional Research Service, Russia was cited as the world’s second-largest arms exporter; Russia exports arms to more than 45 countries and has accounted for an estimated 20 percent of global arms sales since 2016. Many countries have long-standing arms relationships with Russia, the CRS report stated, some dating back to the Soviet Union.  A 2019 Russia-Africa summit produced contracts with more than 30 African countries to supply military armaments and equipment.

Advanced aircraft, tanks and armored vehicles, artillery, air defense, missiles, ships  naval systems and small arms serve to exacerbate existing conflicts, such as Russia’s supply of arms to Eritrea, which is involved in Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict and which has involved its military in various conflicts in the Horn of Africa region and beyond.  More recently, Russia has provided direct military intervention in African conflicts, which has made their help surprisingly popular.

“The day after the military staged a coup in Burkina Faso in January, supporters of the new regime took to the streets waving Russian flags,” stated a February 17, 2022, article in Foreign Affairs magazine. “The scene may sound like a throwback to the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for influence in Africa, but the demonstrators were taken with more recent examples of the Kremlin’s actions on the continent. They spoke approvingly about Russia’s deployment of mercenaries in Libya, Mali, and the Central African Republic (CAR) to fight off Islamist insurgents. ‘The Russians got good results in other African countries,’ a supporter of the coup told The New York Times. “We hope they can do the same here.’”

Still, unlike many others in the international community, Russian involvement in peacekeeping is minuscule.  For example, its contribution to the UN stabilization mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, comprises less than 0.2 percent of the mission’s personnel, despite being the largest concentration of Russian personnel in any UN peacekeeping operation in Africa.

As important as Russian military aid in Africa is at this point, one must not lose sight of its other economic interest on the continent.  Russia has doubled its trade with countries in Africa since 2015, totaling about $20 billion a year.  In an interview on Russia’s state-owned Tass news agency last year, Russia was said to have exported $14 billion worth of goods and services to Africa and imported roughly $5 billion in African products.

Russian businesses, including state-backed commercial interests, have invested heavily in African security sectors, technology and industries that extract natural resources such as oil, gas, gold and other minerals.  Rusal is a company that excavates minerals for aluminum in Guinea-Conakry, and nuclear group Rosatom mines uranium in Namibia. Alrosa, the world’s largest diamond mining company, is trying to expand operations in Angola and Zimbabwe.

Russia also has used its economic ties to help create alliances with African members of the United Nations.  The Africa component comprises about one-quarter of UN member states, and three non-permanent African members of the UN Security Council, known as the A3, are elected for rotating two-year terms.  African votes have been quite useful for Russia, such as the 29 African countries that voted against or abstained from the December 2018 resolution condemning Russia’s militarization of Crimea, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov; six other African delegates did not show up for the vote.

In return, Russia partnered with the A3 in the Security Council in January 2019 to stalemate UN efforts to examine the disputed election results in the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite a plea from Congolese opposition figures for an investigation and greater international involvement in the dispute. In April of that year, Russia and the A3 blocked a UK-drafted Security Council resolution that called for a ceasefire in Libya and condemned the actions of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, who has been supported by Russia.

Now that Russia and China are growing closer, it is likely that they will find common ground in exploiting Africa’s resources and gaining control of critical ports, such as on the Red Sea.  Freed from trying their previous goal of turning African governments into Marxist satellite regimes, Russia and its Chinese partners can both concentrate on developing allies on a more pragmatic and less ideological basis.

Africa is no less important to the United States and the rest of the world than they are to Russia or China, but these two governments have identified their goals and not let international law, good governance, transparency or anything else stand in the way of achieving what they set out to accomplish. 

Meanwhile, the United States has defined our Africa interests in terms of what we want more than what African governments want.  Not that we need to emulate the amoral efforts of Russia or China to get what they want out of Africa regardless of its impact on Africa’s people, but our government must realize that Africans don’t always see things as we do.  Consequently, if we are to compete with Russia and China, we can’t demand that African governments transform into mirror images of America overnight, even as we use all our efforts to get them to understand the long-term benefits of governing in a more accountable, efficient manner that is respectful of the rights of their citizens.

Until we can get these governments to accept the need for accountable behavior, we will have to cultivate African citizen groups that do understand this in order to challenge bad behavior from within and successfully contest elections, provide rewards for those existing governments who do accept accountability and use arms embargoes to the extent possible to prevent Africa from being flooded with weapons that only further destructive conflicts.  Given the Russian head start in cultivating African votes in the UN, this latter point won’t be easy if at all possible.

Africa has been gradually slipping into totalitarian territory for some time now.  If our government and other democracies don’t pay more attention to this trend, we will find that Africa’s resources that we need and international institutions that we utilize are being manipulated and controlled by those who mean us no good – even more than that already happens.