What is Russia looking for in Africa?
Since 2019 and the holding of the first Russia-Africa summit, Russia has established bilateral intergovernmental commissions for trade, economic, scientific, and technological cooperation with many countries on the continent, and the network of Russian embassies and trade missions in Africa is set to expand.
Reasons for Russia’s tendency to develop relations with Africa
One of the reasons for Russia’s tendency to develop relations with Africa was previously stated by Andrey Bystritsky, the head of the Valdai International Discussion Foundation: Africa can become the cradle of a new world order, and this is important: a reasonable order.
Russian analysts Andrey Maslov and Vsevolod Sviridov also wrote in a note: Until recently, Russia viewed African countries primarily as a collective political partner, an armed friend in building a multipolar world and in the fight against neo-colonialism. While Africa primarily looks at Russia as a promising trading partner, a guarantor of food and energy security. At the same time, the Black Continent expects Russia to be an investor (in order to expand markets), a donor of technologies (in order to gain competence in them), and, in general, a long-term and reliable partner in development.
Alexei Maslov, director of the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University, also believes: It is practically impossible to overtake China in investing in Africa, because China came to Africa much earlier than Russia with its proposals. More precisely, it was Russia that lost the positions it had during the Soviet era, and vice versa, China gained them.
The note states: In trade exchanges with the African continent, China is more than 15 times superior to Russia.
The view of former colonialists on Russian-African relations
The strengthening of Russia’s presence in Africa did not please the former colonialists of the black continent, to the point that it even became the subject of a question from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In part of a television interview that was conducted in March 2013, the presenter asked Putin, referring to French President Macron’s recent positions on the deployment of NATO forces to Ukraine: Has Macron decided to take revenge on Russia because we have stepped on its tail in Africa?
The Russian President answered this question: Yes, I think there is some kind of discontent; when we had direct contact with him, we spoke about this quite openly.
Putin added: We did not go to Africa and did not expel France from there; the problem is different. The famous Wagner Group first carried out a number of economic projects in Syria, and then moved to African countries.
According to him, the Russian Ministry of Defense supports these activities, but only on the basis that this is a Russian group, nothing more.