COUNTERING RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN AFRICA

1. Russia has gained a reputation in Africa for its use of unofficial, asymmetric and extra-legal tools. Such tools include private military contractors (PMCs), disinformation technology and the embedding of Kremlin strategists. These methods of influence are relatively low-cost, and avoid any need to sustain traditional diplomatic, economic and security partnerships with African nations while also affording the Kremlin plausible deniability. It is a win-win scenario for Russia but there are already ample warning signs that such tactics are having destructive social and political impacts while violating international law.
2. Russia pursues narrow strategic objectives in Africa that hinder the continent’s long-term stability and progress. While US, European and China policy in the region relies on the building of strong, stable, secure and prosperous nations, Russia’s policy suits insecurity and weak governance, despite its rhetoric. Russia’s core strategic goals in Africa can be narrowed down to gaining influence, expanding its geostrategic presence to confront the West, establishing a source of natural resources and advancing a post-liberal international order. Instability gives Russia the conditions from which to strengthen its ties with African leaders in the guise of posing short-term and heavy-handed solutions to deep and complex systemic problems. While the immediate sense of physical and political security the Kremlin can offer may be attractive to some African leaders who today are overwhelmed by competing threats, it is likely it will deliver only limited and immediate reassurances. As seen in Syria and Venezuela – where the Kremlin-backed interventions to export its own authoritarian and kleptocratic governance model have simply led to dependency on Russia’s “regime-support packages”, this approach in Africa could lead to greater insecurities, deeply embedded corruption and proliferating debt in the long term. Despite polling in African nations over the past decade that has shown strong preferences for democracy and a majority rejection of authoritarian rule, it is the latter that will advance under Putin’s strategy for Africa.
3. Expanding Russian influence in Africa also threatens the stability of Europe. The ongoing instability in Africa feeds into an ever-growing market for arms, which could prove beneficial to Russia in navigating the West’s sanctions. Angola, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan are the largest recipients of Russian-arms exports on the continent, but the amount of African countries purchasing arms from the Kremlin has been growing over the past two decades. Russia has also asserted its influence in two major conflict zones on the continent: Libya and the Sahel. When combined with Russia’s access to Middle East ports, including Syria’s Tartus port, Russia’s unchecked influence in Libya and its growing presence in Sudan gives it a stronger position from which to disrupt NATO maritime movements during times of crisis. By securing port access in Africa along the Red Sea through Port Sudan, and with prospects of securing access to the Port of Tobruk in Libya, Russia would be positioned to disrupt naval and maritime passage along the central and eastern Mediterranean, and establish coastal airfields that would make global transit of Russian aircraft – including anti-submarine aircraft – possible. With greater influence in Libya and the Sahel, Russia additionally gains access to two key African migration and human-trafficking routes. This puts Russia in a stronger position to provoke humanitarian and political crises for Europe during times of hostility.
4. Challenging Russia in Africa is essentially a battle of worldviews. Russia is pursuing Putin’s vision of a post-liberal international world order in Africa, a strategy veiled by old-world, anti-colonial rhetoric and disingenuous sympathy for African agency. This includes undermining the rules-based international system and principles of democratic reform in favour of arms for resources and unaccountable leadership. Russia’s rules of engagement with African leadership are designed to challenge the virtues of democracy: efficacy, equitability, transparency and inclusivity. Russia has gained a receptive audience among Africa’s leadership because it exploits genuine fears of insecurity. For some of the African political elite, democratisation and reform have become synonymous with instability and unrest. More needs to be done to rebuild confidence in liberal democracy and demonstrate how, to quote the US administration today, “defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal rights, respecting the rule of law and treating every person with dignity” can help secure a prosperous future for African nations.

As the West is confronted with the realities of Russia’s aggression in Europe, and confrontation remains an inevitability for the foreseeable future, Africa should be at the forefront of the West’s wider strategic focus. The West should show its full commitment to African leaders now as the continent seeks dependable partners that can help it reach its potential and fulfil its needs.

Recommendations: Governance, Civil Society and Economies

The African Union’s Agenda 2063 – marking 100 years since the establishment of the AU – is a vision of a unified Africa able to achieve its collective economic, social and political potential through a “sustainable and efficient” programme of working together. For this dream to be realised, suitable support from the international community is needed. The primary goal for Western leaders and their partners on the continent should be to serve as a stabilising counterweight to adversary forces, which must now include Russia.

In so doing, Western governments should resist the impulse to counter Russian influence through similar tactics. This will not serve African reformists because it will only intensify instability on the ground. Neither will it be in the interests of Western governments whose security and economic interests in Africa are advanced through long-term partnerships with stable, democratic governments. Instead, Western leaders should work consistently to uphold the values that set Western liberal democracies apart from Russia. This means:

1. Incentivising legitimacy: Simply penalizing those leaders who manipulate democratic processes is too reactive and may serve to reinforce growing negative perceptions of traditional Western actors on the continent. To rebalance the harms caused by Russia’s influence, African leaders and international partners that are working to advance a rules-based order need to take decisive action. At the most basic level, the West and other international democratic actors should make an assertive effort to forge deeper diplomatic, economic and security partnerships with those countries in which leaders have come to and remain in power through legitimate means. This includes investing in democratic institutions – and avoiding the bypassing of due process in order to undercut Russia. Additionally, those who have been legitimately elected should not have to choose between international partners and it is reasonable that leaders will want multiple partners. Instead, emphasis should be on creating and securing a shared vision of rules-based stability for progress on the continent, with deepening partnerships to put this into practice.
2. Empowering Africa’s civil society: Russian policy in the region is transactional and focuses entirely on securing the interests of the serving political elite. The West should work to strengthen African civil-society actors so they can better hold their leaders to account and actively contribute to the economic, social and political-reform agendas of their countries. This includes empowering citizen volunteers to identify and call out fake-news spread from Russian disinformation campaigns. Likewise, when African populations are protesting against rigged elections, limited democracy and corruption, international powers need to back them up diplomatically.
   1. Accelerating African economic-transformation and industrialization policies: For a long period, the economies of many African economies have struggled to grow in such a way that empowers the vast majority of the local population. As a result, most global extreme poverty is concentrated in Africa, a phenomenon on the rise since the pandemic. Africa needs to create around 15 million jobs per year to cater to its young, increasingly well-educated youth. By 2034, Africa will account for every one in two babies born globally, underlining the potential of the continent as a future driver of global growth and progress. However, it is essential that the continent industrializes and transforms its economies from a model predominantly rooted in the extraction of natural resources to one based on local-value addition, small- and medium-sized enterprise growth, innovation, technology distribution and increased economic complexity. African nations need genuine partners who can support these local-industrialization strategies so that sectors such as agri-processing, manufacturing and tradable services (including tech-based sectors) can thrive. Russia’s “extraction-and-arms” interventions do not meet the aspirations of the African people, and the West has the capital, capability and expertise to invest at scale in inclusive-growth industries. The West should therefore launch a sizeable, permanent and long-term package to accelerate African industrialization tied to the African Continental Free Trade Area. This should include investment into productive sectors and enabling infrastructure, and improved support to African governments to enable them to roll out an industrial policy anchored to public-private collaboration and joint-problem solving. This approach should be implemented not only as a response to China’s Belt and Road or to Russia’s policies, but also to realize the immense opportunities and fortify the centrality of a global rules-based order. Germany’s “Marshall Plan for Africa”, which marked a shift from aid to investment, the EU’s Global Gateway Strategy, which pledged €150 billion to Africa between 2021 and 2027, and the United States’ International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which doubled lending capacity to $60 billion, are all examples of recent adjustments that have been made to rebalance competition in light of Chinese and Russian economic assertiveness overseas.

Recommendations: Security

There also now needs to be a cohesive strategy between Western governments and Africa’s reforming leaders to find alternatives to Russian mercenaries in the face of growing security threats on the continent. This means:

1. Enhancing and supporting a strong and responsive African security architecture. Russia’s “influence-for-arms” strategy is aimed at securing leaders rather than states. The West should incentivize the strengthening of regional institutions, such as the African Union, by supporting collective security capabilities. Rather than relying on international peacekeeping, Africa’s leadership should be able to debate and dispatch stabilizing forces to secure fragile states and hold fellow leaders to account. The West should mitigate genuine security concerns by providing diplomatic, technical and financial support to Africa’s leadership. In the absence of robust stabilizing support, African leaders will be more inclined to sign deals with Russia and its Wagner Group, which are designed to entrench Russian influence and compromise hard-earned sovereignty. There is no clearer demonstration of this than in the Sahel region today.
2. Helping African partners to fight and disrupt Russia’s disinformation campaigns. Russian disinformation nurtures political and ethnic divides, and fans distrust and instability. Lessons need to be applied from the Western Balkan countries that have developed effective counter-Russian disinformation methods. Western governments can build the capacity of African government and private-sector initiatives dedicated to disrupting sophisticated disinformation campaigns. To this end, Western governments should help to facilitate coordinated efforts between private technology companies, social-media platforms and government agencies. They should invest in young African talent who are already demonstrating innovation in digital technologies for the public good. Much precedence and infrastructure has already been built to counter terrorist propaganda and these capabilities can be equally applied in Africa.