RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has this week hosted an interesting conference in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, to which he invited 44 presidents and prime ministers from all over Africa. The two-day gathering draws together the threads that Putin has been laying out in recent years by hosting individual African heads of state in Moscow.
Amidst the normal statements about goodwill and mutual benefit, the noises coming out of the conference focused on trade. Russia has indeed doubled its exports to African countries in the last four years. However its $20 billion of Africa sales stands in stark contrast to the $204 billion China recorded last year. The US, EU and India are also way ahead of Russian exports to the continent and even the United Arab Emirates earned more from Africa than Moscow in 2018. While Russian business would love to sell more into Africa, the country is not renowned for its consumer goods and high technology. However, it has always been successful selling armaments, to the extent that throughout Africa, the Kalashnikov AK47 is virtually ubiquitous, both in the hands of security forces and terrorists, such as Boko Haram, Nigerian franchise of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). African states might also be customers for Russian oil and refined products.
But clearly it is not really trade that underpins the Russian president’s African hearts and minds campaign. Putin’s real interest is geopolitical. And in this he is looking in two directions. Despite Moscow’s current amity with Beijing, they are essentially rivals. China’s massive economic power dwarfs that of Russia. On paper, its armed forces are more than a match for those of Moscow. But in terms of military confrontation, the Kremlin and the White House are glowering with each other. Despite Washington’s brinkmanship with the reefs and rocks that Beijing has expanded and militarized in the South China Sea, in defiance of international law, presidents Trump and Xi are currently at odds over trade rather than the projection of military power.
