Moscow hosted the third Russia-Africa Summit this week, which has been held every couple of years since the inaugural one in Sochi in 2019. This format optimizes Russia’s engagement with the continent’s countries by enabling it to review, discuss, and advance bilateral and multilateral relations. Out of Africa’s many partners, Russia is arguably the most reliable one because it doesn’t need its countries’ resources, of which it already has plenty. This means that Russia will always offer fair deals with no strings attached.
While business imperatives and breaking the West’s isolation of Russia are important motives, the primary driving force behind Russia’s outreaches to Africa in recent years is the way in which this advances its national security. Russia’s explicitly declared goal of comprehensively strengthening its partners’ sovereignty so as to help them break free of the West’s neo-colonial shackles is meant to deprive its Western rivals of the African resources that partially fund their military-industrial complexes.
These same military-industrial complexes contribute to Ukraine’s killing of Russians, both servicemen and civilians, and are expected to continue posing problems for Russia’s national security long after the Ukrainian Conflict ends due to the European-Russian arms race. By helping Africa break free from the neo-colonial shackles that allow the West to extract so much wealth from it, Russia hopes to force the West to redirect social spending to the arms race with all the attendant domestic political consequences.
This goal contextualizes the involvement of its Africa Corps (previously Wagner) in the Central African Republic and what’s now known as the Sahelian Alliance, both of which hitherto used to fall within France’s “sphere of influence” but have since left it, though not without punitive Hybrid War costs. France continues meddling in their affairs, ergo the importance of Russia’s continued “Democratic Security” support, or assistance with counter-Hybrid War tactics, strategies, and, if requested, policies.
For the rest of Russia’s African partners, however, their ties with it are more conventional. Instead of active support on the battlefield, it provides investment, tech, trade, energy, fertilizer, skill transfers, and infrastructure modernization, et al. The aforesaid partners receive such support too alongside the military-security support that was described. Each country’s ties with Russia are unique, but there are some similarities between them and within regions, hence the importance of multilateral summits.
Circling back to the latest one, expectations among enthusiasts should be tempered because Africa’s Russian-assisted victory over Western neo-imperialism isn’t going to occur in full anytime soon. It’s a work in progress, a long-term grand strategic goal that all parties are slowly but surely working towards. There’ll be some twists and turns, and perhaps even setbacks in some cases, but the importance is that this trend aligns with the global systemic transition to multipolarity that’s accelerated in recent years.
All in all, Russia is Africa’s most reliable partner because it doesn’t need its countries’ resources, which is why it can always be counted upon to offer fair deals with no strings attached. Russia has nowhere near the excess capital that the US and China do for investing in the continent, but its global expertise in the resource industry (commodities, energy, and minerals) sets it apart from both, as does its reputation as explained. That’s why so many African states are nowadays eagerly expanding cooperation with Russia.
