The price of Russo-African relations, judging by events at the 2nd Russian African Summit in St Petersburg last Thursday, graced by our own President Cyril Ramaphosa, seems to be mixed, deflationary and typically over-aspirational.
It’s a far cry from the 2019 inaugural summit in Sochi amid different global geopolitics and economic head winds, hosted by a much more upbeat Russian leader, President Vladimir Putin, bereft of the shackles of an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which will deprive him from attending the 15th BRICS Leaders’ Summit in person in South Africa in August.
The Russian strongman instead has confirmed that he would be attending the summit via Zoom, thus saving his South African host and fellow BRICS counterparts in Brazil, India and China the embarrassment of any potential arrest incident.
Ramaphosa is spot on when he told the plenary session of the St Petersburg summit that “African countries should, as sovereign states, be able to pursue independent foreign policy approaches that are not beholden to any of the major global powers or blocs.
Our participation in forums such as this one is guided by our quest to realise the AU’s Agenda 2063 vision of economic integration and inclusive socio-economic development.
We see this summit as an opportunity to promote enhanced global co-operation to achieve common prosperity for all the nations of Africa.”
As the president emphasised, “geopolitical tensions are negatively affecting countries across Africa”.
But as the balance sheet of risks and benefits in contemporary Russo-African engagement shows these are intriguing and counterintuitive. Let’s face it. The four major global power bloc suitors of Mama Africa – the US, China, EU and Russia – as the president alluded to, are far more synergetic as the rhetoric of rifts suggests.
They all want the same thing –influence in pursuit of their respective national self-interest, creeping geopolitical hegemony, and access to vital raw materials, in exchange for the usual suspects of geo-economic niceties – sovereign debt disguised as investment especially linked to infrastructure (aka the alleged Chinese debt trap and the highly conditional IMF/World Bank/EU/DIFID/AIIB/NDB financial facilities), arms supplies, selective political support, especially in global platforms, and yes, occasionally genuine development funding.
They feign to be “friends with benefits” – displaying a “beguiling” public affection to each other laced with the intrigue of diplomatic intimacy, but they are not genuinely committed to each other’s cause.
The reality is that in recent years Africa’s relations with the four global power blocs have been characterised by chauvinism bordering on entitlement and neglect by the US; a quest for geopolitical expansion and economic influence by China through throwing money at Africa; an EU in polycrises, beholden to the fallout of its colonial past with the rising continent underpinned by corrupt relations with a handful of African leaders, the spectre of institutional racism in Europe and the festering migrant issue; and a sanctions-ridden Russia playing off Africa against each other and with the “neo-colonialist” West in a desperate effort to reverse its fortune.
So, what does this 21st Century scramble for Africa entail, especially Russian largesse in real economy and development terms? Putin claims that “Russia has a lot to offer its African partners and is increasing supplies of agricultural products to Africa as it understands the importance of supply of food for social and economic development and maintaining the political stability of African countries”.
And yet his unilateral exit from the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI) with Türkiye and Ukraine a week earlier to the chagrin of UN Secretary-General António Guterres and summit attendee Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been a spectacular own goal. Under the BSGI Ukraine exported 32 million tons of grain, of which 725 000 tons went to the World Food Programme, which was sent as humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Egypt, as one of the largest importers of Ukrainian and Russian grain and sunflower oil, has been particularly affected. Not surprisingly, President al-Sisi strongly urged his Russian host to renew the “essential” BSGI, allowing Ukraine to export grain once again.
Putin’s assurance that “Russia will always be a responsible international supplier of agricultural products and will continue to support the countries and regions in need by offering free grain and other supplies” rings hollow, despite his claim that Moscow supplied 11.5 million tons of grain to African states in 2022, and almost 10 million tons in FH 2023 “despite illegal sanctions that have been imposed against Russian exports".
His pledge to supply Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Eritrea and Central African Republic – all supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – each with 25 000 tons of grain free of charge in the next three months, did not impress Guterres, who warned that “such donations of grain can’t compensate for the impact of Moscow’s cut off of grain exports from Ukraine, which along with Russia is a top supplier to the world market”.
Other measures announced by Putin include:
i) A meagre US$90 million allocation to write off African sovereign debt.
ii) Funding Russian-supported African projects in national currencies on platforms of the New Development Bank and the AIIB.
iii) A proposal to connect African banks to the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages (as an alternative to the Swift system from which Russian banks are currently barred) and their transition to payments in roubles.
iv) The possibility of Russia and African countries conducting business in the energy sector on a barter and counter-trade basis.
Ramaphosa’s hope that these Russia-Africa summits will play “a key role in supporting our objectives of African integration, economic growth, peace and common prosperity” is peppered with a healthy dose of foreign policy myopia, denial, naiveté and wishful thinking.
No sooner had the St Petersburg indaba started than Putin’s errant comrade-in-arms Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of the mercenary Wagner Group, reportedly coincidentally in St Petersburg, welcomed last week’s military coup in Niger.
St Petersburg 2023 also turned out to be a diplomatic disaster. Compared with the Sochi summit in 2019 when 43 African leaders attended, only 17 graced last week’s summit, which left Putin reportedly fuming.
African unity pertaining to the continent’s engagement with Russia is as divided as it is fragmented. A notable absentee was Kenyan President William Ruto, who denounced Putin’s exit from the BSGI as a “stab in the back of global food security prices”.
Parker is an economist and writer based in London.
Cape Times