Russia’s return to Africa: a renewed challenge to the West?

ABSTRACT

We track the major developments in Soviet-African relations as a prelude to recently revived Russian policy. Russian policy today is much less ideological than that of the Soviet Union and relies more on the establishment of mutually beneficial economic relations. Soviet/Russian policy in Africa over six decades has been motivated by more than by traditional security concerns. In the case of the former, the effort to encourage and speed up a global communist revolution, along with geopolitical competition with the US and the West were central. Now, although geopolitical competition remains an element of Russian policy, the major interest has been markets for exports and access to energy and minerals as part of the goal of re-establishing Russia as a major global power.

KEYWORDS:

• USSR
• Russia
• foreign policy
• Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This article draws significantly upon a chapter by Kanet and Moulioukova (2021).

2. Why the Soviets made no real effort before 1953 to influence the developing world is not fully clear; it was no doubt influenced by the communist focus on the importance of a working-class movement in the expected shift from capitalist to communist economic systems – which was of little evidence in Africa or elsewhere in what was still the European-dominated colonial world. As noted by the BBC World Service (n.d.), it was difficult to apply Marxist theory to Africa. “With the exception of South Africa and North Africa, the continent was largely rural, with no large-scale industry. There was trade but it did not amount to capitalism. There was scarcely any banking system and no significant urban working class.” Moreover, the fact that the Soviets had little or no dealings with the “Third World,” in large part because the colonial powers did what they were able to prevent contacts, likely played a major role in their failure to initiate activities.

3. Soviet policy was part of a growing geopolitical competition between the USSR and the United States. During the Congo crisis in 1960, for example, the US intervened to prevent a perceived Communist takeover. The CIA conspired with local factions to assassinate the Congo’s Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was perceived to favor communist and Soviet interests. Moreover, US support for apartheid in South Africa was a mainstay of successive American administrations for decades because of its fear of left-oriented political groups (Thomson 2008; Soudan 2021). Throughout the Cold War and thereafter US arms transfers continued to non-democratic governments which violated human rights.

4. By “identity” and “self-image” the authors are referring to three major factors: first, ideological issues directly related to a sense of identity and self-image a “great power,” now tied up with being the leader of an international communist movement; second, by the increasingly global military and political competition with the United States, which was also strongly influenced by the sense of identity as a revolutionary power committed to changing the international economic and political systems; and, third, by the long-term economic interests that could be gained through international involvement. Economic, military, and geopolitical assistance were the tools with which the Soviet leadership attempted to reach its objectives. The role of “identity” is strongly influenced by the theory of “ontological security” as developed in the writings of R.D. Laing (2002), Giddens (1991; see also Gauntlett 2008), and the work of many other scholars including chapters in Kanet and Moulioukova (2021).

5. On the concept of “changing international correlation of forces,” see Aspaturian (1980) and Shakhnazarov (1974).

6. For a discussion of the concept of non-capitalist development, see Ul’yanovskii (1966).

7. Most of the following discussion is well known, but it is important to treat it here as essential to understanding more recent developments in Russian policy in Africa. For a perceptive assessment of the decline and collapse of the USSR, see King (2020).

8. For a more extended treatment of the place of the developing world in Gorbachev’s reinterpretation of Soviet foreign policy, see Kanet (1989).

9. Soviet policy in the developing world went through three stages during the Gorbachev years. Until late 1987 or early1988, despite the new rhetoric, policy changed little. In fact, in Afghanistan involvement was increased in the attempt to gain a military victory over US-supported insurgents. Then, beginning in 1988 until mid-1990 or so, the Soviets engaged in major efforts to encourage clients from Nicaragua and Angola to Cambodia to resolve conflicts with insurgents peacefully, as they reduced their economic and military involvement. In the final year and a half of the Soviet state, Moscow was so focused on domestic economic and political problems that it virtually deferred to the West, as in the Gulf War of 1990–91 (Kanet 1994).

10. This and the following discussion borrow from Kanet, Kozhemiakin, and Birgerson (1997).

11. One Soviet specialist on African affairs writing at the time commented that Gorbachev had presided over the collapse of the USSR’s African policy (see Kiva 1991).

12. Once more we refer here to the importance of the concept of “ontological security,” with its emphasis on self-image or identity in the analysis of any country’s foreign policy.

13. President Vladimir Putin has said that Africa is one of Russia’s foreign policy priorities and has spoken about offering: political and diplomatic support, defense and security help, economic assistance, disease-control advice, humanitarian-relief assistance, and educational and vocational training (Putin 2019; BBC News 2020). For a superb assessment of current Russian objectives in Africa, see Siegle (2021).

14. As pointed out by Vladimir Shubin (2013), economic ties “can hardly be called intensive. Trade turnover between Russia and Africa as a whole was about $11 billion, and imports exceed exports. True, that is 6.5 times higher than in 2001, but about 80% of the figure concerns countries north of the Sahara with a long history of relations – especially Algeria, Egypt and Morocco. The fact that in 2012 Russia’s trade turnover with South Africa increased by 66% to reach $964 million is rightly regarded as a success, but it is almost 30 times lower than that of China.”

15. On the other hand, Africa, unlike any other region of the world, appears to be urbanizing without at the same time industrializing on a substantial scale, thus opening itself in the future to continuing and significant dependence on the Global North (see Gollin, Jedwab, and Vollrath 2016).

16. “Africa’s rich oil, gas and other mineral resources (possessing 9.7% of world proven oil and 7.8% of gas reserves, and altogether about 30% of global resources) pose a strong attraction to industrialised nations and lately also to Russian energy companies,” as noted by Olivier and Suchkov (2019, 152).

17. See also Bugavoya and Regio (2019, 6). Russia has supplied arms to 18 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past 10 years: Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia (Stronski 2019).

18. For a discussion of Russian involvement in internal in conflicts in Africa, see Marten (2019a), as well as documentation concerning these activities in Dettmer, Dzheimi (Jamie) (2019).

19. See also Tsygankov (2021). Although the Biden administration is attempting to re-establish positive relations with African and other states, the amount of global influence exerted by Washington is not likely to return to that of the past (Signé 2021).

20. It is important to note, as mentioned earlier in this article, that Moscow’s most active involvements in Africa are with some of the continent’s institutionally weaker states, such as Sudan, Zimbabwe, and the Central African Republic – much as was the case with those significantly involved with the USSR (Goble 2021).

21. For discussions of the Bush Doctrine and its contributions to instability in the international system, including to the deterioration of relations with Russia, see Kanet (2005, 2017).

22. On the EU’s attempt to extend its norms and values eastward via the Eastern Neighborhood Policy, see Casier (2012).

23. On Western support for the color revolutions, including that of Western NGOs, see Stent (2014).

24. Russian trade with Africa is still concentrated in only a handful of countries – that is, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, and South Africa, which together account for 80% of Africa’s exports to Russia (Olivier and Suchkov 2019).

25. As noted above, this is often termed “ontological security” by Laing (2002), Giddens (1991), and likeminded analysts.