Thursday 28th November the Senegalese President announced the closure of French bases on its territory; on the same day, the Chad has cancelled its defence agreements with France. At the same time, a large number Russian delegation landed in Bamako in Mali, first stop of a visit to theSahel Alliance (AES–Alliance des Etat du Sahel) continued on 29 and 30 November with visits in Burkina Faso and Niger, the other two member states of the Alliance.
If the French presence in Senegal It was important, but limited to a naval air base of 400 men, in Chad there is the main French force in Africa, composed of over 1.000 permanently stationed soldiers and another 1.000 from the force just withdrawn from Niger and an important air and logistics base which for decades made it the French stronghold for the dozens of French military interventions in Africa.
La Russian delegation, led by Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, is accompanied by Deputy Minister of Defense of Russia Yunus-Bek Yeukurov, the head of the Africa Corps and a senior official of the Ministry of Defense Andrei Аveryanov and was engaged, in concluding new bilateral agreements in the field of combating terrorism, in ensure security in the region, in which i Russian military, veterans of the war in Ukraine, will form the armies of the three countries with particular reference to theuse of drones.
The coincidence of events is enough to make the ranks of French diplomacy and defense shudder while Russia's African interventionism, based on an economic and military diplomacy that seduces part of the continental elite, attracts old and new partners, winks at putschist juntas and supplants France as a gendarme of countries in turmoil. The Russian strategy combines pragmatism and identity of political visions and as such is light years away from the democratic conditioning, with variable geometry, that informs Western relations with the rest of the world. It proposes alternatives; it exploits a certain anti-French and anti-Western sentiment; it foments it with infiltration of “trolls” on social media and with multiple initiatives focused on the information sphere.
The current ones Russian key men They are Deputy Defense Minister General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and General Andreij Averyanov, who oversees the Africa Corps and who until recently commanded the 161st center of the GRU, the military intelligence special action service. The two were traveling in the area in the summer of 2023, to refresh bilateral agreements with Algeria, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central Africa and Libya, the Russian security belt in Africa, with a megabase in progress in Central Africa and a win-win mechanism for the various parties, made up of protection in exchange for mineral rights. The geopolitical revolution envelops the South of the world, redraws spheres of influence and leads to a strategic downgrading of the West.
The new benchmark states in Africa
Moscow, Beijing, Ankara and the United Arab Emirates are new points of reference for African countries, and in particular the Emirates have become the second largest net investors in Africa after China. Apart from Ankara, which submitted its request in early September, the other three capitals are already part of the BRICS hub, which is constantly expanding and increasingly open to African countries, to new members Egypt and Ethiopia, and to South Africa since 2010.
La Russia deploys in the South the best of its new economic capitalism, no less predatory than that of others, combining the action of state giants and private groups. Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil (energy companies) are the spearheads, flanked by Rusal in the mining sector and Rosatom in civil nuclear power. The latter, despite the loss of the South African market, has plans for cooperation not only with Egypt, but also with Algeria, Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Zambia. The Kremlin's foreign policy documents speak clearly: marginal in the 2016 doctrine, l'Africa has acquired an unprecedented centrality in the 2023 document and the official visits of Sergei Lavrov confirm this fact. The number one of Russian diplomacy often goes to the continent: in early June 2024 he was in Guinea, Congo Brazaville, Burkina Faso and Chad. This is not surprising, because the Kremlin has diplomatic relations with all African states and a network of embassies in 49 of the 54 continental countries, whose vote weighs in the United Nations General Assembly. This was seen at the time of the resolutions against Russia for the war in Ukraine: thanks to African lukewarmness, the Kremlin felt a little less isolated.
The Armaments Wheel
Russian business in Africa revolves around weaponry. 20 are the new military agreements between the Russian Federation and African states from 2015 to today, up from the initial seven; 30% is the Russian share of the African arms market, where multilateral competition and widespread illegality have long been emerging. 18 billion dollars is the total amount of trade between Russia and Africa in 2023, with a 400% growth (in the last decade) of Russian trade with Africa, but with a market share more similar to the Dutch 4-5% than to the Chinese 27-28%.
Putin's Dreams of Greatness
Yet the president Vladimir Putin cultivates dreams of grandeur. Consider the Soviets, who had a military presence in the Indian Ocean, a fifth Mediterranean Squadron, and access to Guinea and Angola. In the 70s, the USSR had 40 military advisers working in Africa and enjoyed naval facilities in Yemen, Egypt, and Libya. Today, the Kremlin has much less to offer. Its fleet is reduced to a tenth of the Soviet one, and its mercenaries are not always brilliant: they have suffered bitter setbacks in Mozambique, losing business and contracts, and recently suffered a new defeat against the Malian Tuaregs, after their successes at Kidal.
Despite everything, Moscow has agrowing footprint, from South Africa, to Congo, to Madagascar to Equatorial Guinea where it has just sent military advisors. Its soldiers of fortune work in Libya, in the triple alliance of the Sahel and in Central Africa. The Kremlin uses Cyrenaica as a logistical platform, a hub for soldiers heading south and a crossroads for weapons. It has an undeniable influence on the contenders in the Sudanese civil war. It aims to have a naval base, to establish itself in Port Sudan, and to penetrate the Mediterranean, with Tobruk in its sights, to draw a route between Syrian Tartus, Suez, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf.
