Late to the Party: Russia’s Return to Africa

After a decades-long absence, Russia is once again appearing on the African continent. The Kremlin’s return to Africa, which has generated considerable media, governmental, and civil society attention, draws on a variety of tools and capabilities. Worrying patterns of stepped-up Russian activity are stirring concerns that a new wave of great-power competition in Africa is now upon us. U.S. policymakers frequently stress the need to counter Russian malign influence on the continent. On a visit to Angola in early 2019, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said that “Russia often utilizes coercive, corrupt, and covert means to attempt to influence sovereign states, including their security and economic partnerships.” Advocates for a more forceful Western policy response point to high-visibility Russian military and security cooperation in the Central African Republic and the wide-ranging travels of Russian political consultants and disinformation specialists as confirmation that Russia, like China, represents a major challenge in Africa.

Yet is that really the case? Are Russian inroads and capabilities meaningful or somewhat negligible? Hard information is difficult to come by, but any honest accounting of Russian successes will invariably point to a mere handful of client states with limited strategic significance that are isolated from the West and garner little attention from the international community. It remains unclear whether Russia’s investments in Africa over the past decade are paying off in terms of creating a real power base in Africa, let alone putting it on a footing that will expand its influence in the years to come.

Nevertheless, Russia increasingly looks to Africa as a region where it can project power and influence. President Vladimir Putin will welcome leaders from across the continent to Sochi in late October for the first Africa-Russia summit, a clear indication of the symbolic importance that Africa holds for the Kremlin right now. It is clear that Russian inroads there would be far more limited but for the power vacuums created by a lack of Western policy focus on Africa in recent years. That state of affairs gives Russia (and other outside powers) an opportunity to curry favor with the continent’s elites and populations. More than anything else, it is opportunism that propels Russia’s relatively low-cost and low-risk strategies to try to enhance its clout and unnerve the West in Africa, just as in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.

RUSSIA’S RETURN TO THE GLOBAL STAGE

Since 2014, when Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea upended the post–Cold War security order, its image on the world stage has undergone a major transformation. Previously thought of as a defunct superpower in retreat, Russia’s ambitions and reach were largely confined to its immediate periphery. However, it is now viewed as a serious actor in distant parts of the world, where its presence has not been felt since the heyday of the Cold War. The 2015 military intervention in Syria radically changed the course of that country’s civil war and Russia’s ability to project power in the broader Middle East. Russian meddling in the domestic politics of the United States, France, and Germany is treated as a clear example of the threat it poses to Western democracies. Russian diplomats and security personnel have been busy reestablishing old ties and establishing new ones around the globe.

Perhaps the most significant testimony to Russia’s transformation from a “regional” to a “great” power, striving to reassert its influence globally, is in the United States’ 2017 National Security Strategy and 2018 National Defense Strategy. Both documents acknowledge the return of long-term strategic competition among nations. However, as myopic as the description of Russia as a “regional” power may have been, it would be equally shortsighted to accept at face value Russia’s return as a true global power. Such a judgment must rest on a sober assessment of its capabilities available to its policymakers for pursuing their global ambitions and on the record of its involvement in regions beyond its periphery. Dwarfed by the United States and China economically and lacking a robust toolkit for long-range projection of military power—particularly an ocean-going navy and a sizable, deployable, and sustainable airborne troops capability—Russia has accomplished a lot to burnish its global power credentials on the cheap. In fact, many key features of its global posture are rooted in a clear desire to avoid becoming entangled in protracted conflicts, an eagerness to outsource risky or costly adventures to nonstate actors, and an economical use of resources in pursuit of opportunities as they arise.

NEW TOOLS, OLD PLAYGROUND

Nowhere has this posture manifested itself more visibly than in Russia’s attempts to return to Africa—an arena it abandoned three decades ago, when the burden of global ambitions became too much to bear for the disintegrating Soviet economy. The Soviet Union enjoyed extensive relationships across Africa for decades through its support for national liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, or Guinea-Bissau, its involvement in the Ogaden or Congolese conflicts, and its courtship of Ethiopia’s leftist regime. As the Soviet Union collapsed, these relationships came to an abrupt halt. The cost of maintaining them was completely nonviable for a post-Soviet Russia struggling to overcome cataclysmic political, economic, and societal challenges.

For over two decades after that, Russian activity in Africa was negligible, apart from intermittent appearances by thuggish arms dealers like Viktor Bout and globally minded businessmen like Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg.

Gradually, however, as the economy and domestic politics stabilized, and as the Kremlin’s foreign policy horizons expanded, Russia began reestablishing a small foothold in Africa. In the mid-2000s, its outreach focused mainly on South Africa and the African Union—two entities it hoped could serve as partners to support its vision for a multipolar world. Russia then expanded its activities, buttressing its involvement in African peacekeeping operations and participating in the international anti-piracy task force off the coast of Somalia. Manifestations of increased Russian influence and presence in Africa have grown exponentially since. Relying on all instruments in its toolkit—political, military-security, economic, diplomatic, and informational—Russia has gamely sought to rebuild old ties and develop new ones.

The track record of the past five years is a prime example of how Russia’s brand of activist and agile foreign policy can be done on the cheap and create the appearance of paying outsized dividends. The Kremlin frequently tries to take advantage of Europe’s and the United States’ missteps on the continent as well as of the growing wariness in Africa about China’s oversized economic clout and ambitions. Yet as this survey of Russia’s activism and priorities makes clear, the scorecard since 2014 provides telling examples of the limits of its power, the exceedingly modest size of its toolkit for pursuing its global ambitions, and its continued predilection for the showy and symbolic over concrete deliverables.

Although North Africa represents an integral part of the continent, Russia’s strategy toward the region is generally guided by its broader goals in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Therefore, Russian policy in North Africa is not a major focus of this study, which concentrates principally on two other regions. The Horn of Africa represents an opportunity for Russia to secure a springboard for projecting power into the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Persian Gulf. In sub-Saharan Africa, its priority is on exploiting new commercial opportunities and securing diplomatic support for its positions in multilateral institutions.

A USEFUL LEGACY

In many respects, Russia’s reemergence in Africa is an earnest attempt to resume relations where they were left when the Soviet Union departed the scene. The Soviet Union was an influential actor in Africa for much of the Cold War. As part of its ideological confrontation with the West, it backed postcolonial independence movements and sought to exploit the colonial legacy to undercut Western influence on the continent and beyond. The Soviet Union sponsored large-scale military, cultural, and educational exchange programs across Africa, cultivating relationships with political, economic, and academic elites.

Moscow relied heavily on close security and intelligence relationships with leaders of African independence or resistance movements. Two postapartheid presidents of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, went through military training in the Soviet Union as part of its outreach to the African National Congress during the apartheid era. Zuma’s frequent meetings with Putin suggest Moscow eagerly tried to revive those Cold War–era ties and that the former South African leader was a receptive partner.

Yet the Soviet Union’s ties to Africa were a far cry from those of modern-day Russia. The Soviets provided significant economic assistance, including infrastructure, agricultural development, security cooperation, and health sector cooperation. Security assistance to postcolonial militaries in Africa, including the provision of weapons and equipment, training, and advisers, as well as the development of intelligence relationships, created a long-term legacy of Soviet hardware and operational culture throughout Africa. The Soviet Union embedded security personnel and advisers in several countries’ military, intelligence, and political structures. Some of these ties have outlasted the Cold War. Today Russia is seeking to rekindle and build on these legacy relationships to regain a foothold in Africa.

The legacy of the Soviet Union’s outreach to Africa has survived the Soviet collapse in other ways. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union opened the doors of its universities to African students, extending educational benefits along with Marxist-Leninist indoctrination. The Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, named after the first prime minister of Zaire and a vocal critic of the West murdered in a CIA-supported coup, was a showpiece of Soviet soft power for the postcolonial world. Many prominent African politicians studied there, including some of the older generation, like former president of Namibia Hifikepunye Pohamba, as well as some younger ones, like former prime minister of Chad Youssouf Saleh Abbas and the Central African Republic’s former president and rebel leader Michel Djotodia.

Like the Soviet Union previously, contemporary Russia has tried to capitalize on a lack of association in the minds of many Africans with colonialism and imperialism. Marxist-Leninist ideology—which the Soviet Union sought to spread across Africa throughout the Cold War—was embraced by many, if not most, national liberation movements. The appeal of Marxism-Leninism obviously has faded since then. But the absence of a colonial or imperialist legacy and the record of support for national liberation movements amount to a reputational advantage Russia still enjoys in dealings with many African partners. Moreover, Russian officials eagerly portray U.S. democracy promotion efforts as a form of neocolonialism. This rhetoric holds appeal to authoritarian-style politicians and regimes where democratic governance is still fragile or under assault.

Taken together, these economic, political, historical, educational, and military-security ties create a useful springboard for rebuilding relations with African countries. However, while the legacy of this Soviet outreach to Africa is important, it only goes so far. With its economy struggling, Russia lacks deep pockets. Russian investor interest in Africa is quite narrow, focusing primarily on natural-resource extraction and energy opportunities that often have already been thoroughly explored or exploited by other players. Cultural ties between Russians and Africans are now quite rare.

Russian strategic documents belie the recent charm offensive and clearly suggest that Africa is not a prime area of strategic interest for Moscow. Beyond noting instability in Africa and the importance of South Africa as a member of the informal BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) club, the continent receives little attention in Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept or its National Security Strategy, although these documents are now several years old. Russia instead sees Africa as a vehicle through which it can weaken the West’s dominance of global governance, find partners for its vision of a post-U.S. multipolar world, and find economic opportunities for Russian companies, particularly those closed off to Western markets because of sanctions.

RUSSIA’S DIPLOMATIC PUSH

Opportunism is a hallmark of Russia’s current foreign policy, and its behavior in Africa is hardly an exception. Russia’s return to Africa in recent years has been facilitated in part by the drop-off in U.S. attention to the continent under President Donald Trump’s administration. In 2018, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs was confirmed, and then national security adviser John Bolton sketched out a broad Africa strategy in a December speech at the Heritage Foundation. In keeping with the emphasis in the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy on great-power competition, Bolton highlighted the importance of containing Chinese and Russian influences on the continent. But the lack of senior U.S. engagement with Africa and the president’s racially charged comments have created plenty of running room for Russia and other actors. The late 2018 decision to scale back U.S. troops in Africa similarly provides openings for Moscow in the security sector.

At the very moment Trump fired secretary of state Rex Tillerson while the latter was on a diplomatic mission to Africa in March 2018, the Kremlin was launching a diplomatic surge that will culminate in the Sochi summit meeting in October. When Trump tweeted about his dismissal of Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was on a five-country African tour. Since then, neither Pompeo, Bolton, nor Bolton’s successor Robert O’Brien have visited the continent nor devoted much attention to Africa-related policy issues.

Lavrov returned to Africa in June 2018 to visit South Africa and Rwanda. By October, Russia had signed multiple military, economic, and security cooperation agreements with a handful of African countries. Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev visited Angola, Algeria, and South Africa in summer 2018, where he warned of U.S.-inspired color revolutions and other Western plots to stoke chaos on the continent. Putin made a low-key visit to Africa to attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in 2018.

A parade of senior African leaders has visited Moscow during the subsequent period, and a surprising number are granted courtesy calls with Putin and other senior officials. Twelve heads of state from sub-Saharan Africa have visited Russia since 2015—six of them in 2018 (see table 1). Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, the Kremlin’s special representative for the Middle East and Africa, is particularly active. The Duma hosted delegations from various African countries for an international parliamentary forum in July 2019, with one full day devoted to Russian-African relations. During that event, Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin pushed anti-colonial narratives in his speech to African delegates, comparing Western policies toward the continent with Russia’s willingness to help “protect the sovereign right of African states to build their own future.”

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Carnegie Endowment