confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
From Russia with geopolitics
Blue Lines
Although he pulled in dozens of Africa's leaders to the first
Russia-Africa summit in Sochi on 23-24 October, Russia's President
Vladimir Putin is years behind the competition in courting Africa. Russia-Africa trade has doubled to US$20.4 billion over the past five years but that is a tenth of
China-Africa business. Russia isn't in the top five trading partners with Africa, something Putin says he wants to remedy as a foreign policy priority.
His special subjects are nuclear power and the military. Africa now buys a third of Russia's arms exports. As the summit opened at the Black Sea resort, two Tupolev TU-160 strategic nuclear bombers touched down at the Waterkloof Air Force base in
South Africa, presumably as a symbol of military cooperation.
But relations between South Africa and Russia remain strained after President
Cyril Ramaphosa shelved his predecessor's plans to spend over $80 billion on nuclear power projects to be built by Rosatom. Undaunted, Rosatom's sales representatives have been touting their wares to gas and oil-rich
Nigeria as well as
Ethiopia, whose mega-hydro plants will make it one of Africa's top power exporters over the next five years.
Putin is co-hosting the summit with
Egypt's Abdel Fattah el Sisi – the two leaders are working together in
Libya in support of the rebel general
Khalifa Haftar, whose military campaign against the Tripoli government is bogged down. Moscow says it has military cooperation deals with at least 15 states.
