'Roofing' the Sahel: Russia is expanding its influence in Africa through violence, local elites’ lust for power, and Western miscalculations

Central Africa has become a battleground of competition between the West and Russia, in which the West is clearly losing. Russia has capitalised on the sharp rise in Islamic extremism and violence in the region's poorest countries to offer their leaders a 'survival package,' guaranteeing protection for the 'friendly' elite in exchange for providing a 'roof' of access to local resources.

Moscow is achieving these goals through the Prigozhin model of a hybrid commercialised presence, previously based on Wagner PMC mercenaries, who have now transitioned to the Ministry of Defense's African Corps. As a result, over the past few years, Moscow has significantly expanded its military and political presence on the continent (especially in the Sahel region) and has taken control of important natural resource deposits.

For a long time, the West, despite formally marking its presence in Africa, did not pay sufficient attention to the region and is now reaping the consequences of its miscalculations, experts say. To regain lost positions, the US and its allies should develop a new strategy for interacting with African countries, based not on 'lecturing about democracy', but on realpolitik, focusing on creating mutually beneficial political and economic alliances with local elites.

Package rules

Russia has significantly strengthened its strategic positions in Africa in recent years, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the region's weakest states, the spread of Islamic terrorism, and leveraging the power hunger of local leaders along with the benefits of the hybrid presence and commercialisation model developed by Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Moscow's successful policy in Africa is linked to the active use of militarised mercenary formations, which receive carte blanche to commit violent actions under the guise of 'counter-terrorism,' while also providing the leadership of these countries with a sort of 'regime survival package,' according to experts from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). The essence of the package is that Russia provides political elites in target countries with guarantees of personal security, military support, political protection from negative global reactions at the UN and other international institutions, and the assistance of political technologists to boost the ruling group's popularity domestically. As noted in an analytical note by the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), since 2005, seven Russian PMCs have conducted at least 34 campaigns in 16 African countries, including military and political operations, as well as a number of opaque economic transactions in the continent's extractive industries. The bulk of the 'survival package' services are provided by former Wagner PMC employees, who joined the re-subordinated to the Russian Ministry of Defense African Corps after Yevgeny Prigozhin's death. This continuity was emphasised by Russian authorities in September 2023, when Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Major General of Military Intelligence Andrey Averyanov visited Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, and Niger.

From 2015 to November 2023, Russia signed military cooperation agreements with 43 African countries, which include various levels of interaction, such as military personnel training, arms supply, support in counter-terrorism efforts, and access to military and civilian ports and air bases, according to EPRS experts. Russia is in negotiations to establish military bases in six African countries, including Sudan. In the case of the latter, Russia aims to create a logistical support point for warships in Port Sudan on the Red Sea and station up to 300 military personnel there – allowing Moscow to control strategic maritime routes in the region.

Economic victories

Russia has significantly increased its presence in the African mining and energy market, mainly in countries characterised by weak governance, such as the Central African Republic (CAR), Guinea, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Sudan, according to a report by the Economist Intelligence Group. In 2018, the Alrosa group increased its stake in the Catoca diamond mine in Angola to 41%. In the CAR and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Russian companies hold substantial concessions for the extraction of cobalt, gold, coltan, and diamonds. In Zimbabwe, OJSC Afronet, in collaboration with Zimbabwean Pen East, is developing one of the world's largest platinum deposits. In South Africa, 50% of the Nkomati nickel mine is owned by Norilsk Nickel, and 49% of the fourth-largest manganese producer, United Manganese of Kalahari, is owned by Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group. The Russian group Uranium One holds eight uranium exploration licences in Namibia, and Rusal owns 100% of Guinea's largest bauxite mine, the Dian-Dian project (with a capacity of 3 million tonnes per year), as well as the Kindia mine and the country's third-largest bauxite mine, Friguia. Russia has also signed nuclear cooperation agreements with 20 countries, including preliminary plans to build nuclear power plants with Egypt and Nigeria.

A significant economic effect of Russia's presence in Africa is linked to arms exports. Between 2018 and 2022, Russia accounted for 40% of Africa's imports of major weapons systems, according to EPRS researchers. This is due to the fact that Russian weapons are generally cheaper than foreign counterparts and are compatible with stockpiles from Soviet times that remain in many African countries. Moreover, Russia does not burden arms deliveries with value-based conditions, unlike the West. As noted by Christopher Faulkner of the US Naval War College and Raphael Parens of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in their commentaries for War on the Rocks, although Russia today lags behind as an exporter of advanced weapons systems like fighter jets and surface-to-surface missiles, it is a leader in producing less technologically advanced arms, such as assault rifles, carbines, pistols, and light machine guns, which are especially in demand by African clients. War on the Rocks calls this approach to arms exports 'military-industrial fast food,' as it allows arsenals to be quickly stocked with low-tech weapons. For Russia, losing its traditional high-tech arms export niches due to the war, such 'fast food' arms supplies to 'grey zones' of local and domestic conflicts have become a primary area of arms presence (→ Re: Russia: Two Approaches). Local armies increasingly rely on Russian-made weapons systems, and in the long term, this gives Moscow hope of regaining a share of the African market for more advanced weapons systems.

Connections with Africa also allow the Kremlin to propagate narratives that it is not in complete diplomatic and economic isolation due to the war in Ukraine, notes the EPRS. A significant number of African countries abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on resolutions condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine and calling on Moscow to cease hostilities. The second Russia-Africa summit in July 2023, which gathered representatives from 49 of the 55 members of the African Union in St Petersburg, concluded with the signing of declarations on preventing an arms race in outer space, ensuring international information security, and creating a joint mechanism to combat terrorism. Of course, the position of African leaders on the arms race in space is of little significance. However, for both sides, such agreements are a pleasant hint at having their own global agenda.

Technical defeat

Russia's strengthening position in Africa weakens the West's presence in the region, aligning with the Kremlin's geostrategic interests. Military juntas in the Sahel countries have forced French and UN peacekeeping forces to withdraw, threatening US interests in combating terrorism, writes the Texas National Security Review. In March 2024, the junta in Niger revoked a military cooperation agreement with the US and forced American troops to leave, allowing Russian mercenaries to take over the 101st US airbase, into which the Pentagon had invested $110 million over six years. In April, the US was also forced to withdraw its troops from Chad, where they had been stationed since 2021. According to US Africa Command chief General Michael Langley, these events reduce Washington's ability to 'conduct active surveillance and warning, including for national defence interests.' RUSI experts add that the political expulsion of Western countries from the region will eventually bring Russia new economic benefits: for example, limiting France's access to Niger's uranium reserves will increase Paris's dependence on Russian supplies..

Although Africa has become a key arena of competition between the US, China, and Russia, the Texas National Security Review notes that Washington's engagement with the continent has been episodic and poorly structured until recently. Following the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks, US policy on the continent focused on counterterrorism, but this did not prevent the rise of violent extremism and Islamist terrorism in Africa in the 2020s. Half of all intrastate armed conflicts worldwide in 2022 occurred in Africa (26 out of 52), and the number of deaths in armed conflicts on the continent now exceeds levels last seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s, during the Second Congo War, the deadliest civil war since 1945, writes the Texas National Security Review. The most lethal conflicts in the region are associated with Islamist extremist organisations in Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Somalia.

In this context, Washington's declared commitment to promoting democracy in the region, which War on the Rocks experts describe as 'lecturing about democracy,' has become the Achilles' heel of US foreign policy in Africa. All this has helped strengthen Russia's position: the African Corps has expanded operations in Burkina Faso and then in Niger. War on the Rocks writes that Russian mercenaries display brutality by committing indiscriminate executions, rapes, and killings of civilians, yet simultaneously help local rulers and juntas maintain power, which are primarily concerned with their own political and physical survival.

Russian PMCs are incapable of bringing peace to African countries, write the War on the Rocks analysts: their 'fight against terrorism' is merely a cover for Moscow's ambitions to create a high, sustained demand for Russian security assistance in Africa by prolonging all armed conflicts as much as possible. However, to regain its position in the region, Washington needs not only to convince African leaders of Moscow's true policy goals but also to revise its own approach to the continent. Texas National Security Review experts suggest abandoning overly militarised policies in Africa (which have not yielded results) in favour of real diplomacy. As a model example, experts cite Angola, to which the US and the EU offered significant investments in the construction of a railway corridor: this prompted the African country to abandon economic and political cooperation with both Beijing and Moscow.