Rethinking Russian Foreign Policy towards Africa: Prospects and Opportunities for Cooperation in New Geopolitical Realities

Abstract

Diplomatic ties between Africa and the Russian Federation dates back to Africa’s dark decades of collective struggle for continental decolonization and severance in relations with its European colonizers. There is a vestige of historical evidence to support the claim that Russia had contributed immensely to this struggle in the early 1950s. Historically, the Russian Revolution of 1917 set the stage for the strenuous global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. This revolution, subsequently, inspired leaders of the nationalist movements on the African continent like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, among others to champion the fight for the liberation of Africa. Between 1945 and 1991, international politics was in a hegemonic geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union and the United States and their respective global allies. This power struggle polarized the world into the contrasting ideologies of Capitalism and Socialism. Some African nationalists situated the crusade for self-rule within the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union. The collapse of the USSR on 26 December 1991 and the fall of the Berlin wall on 9 November 1989 heralded a new era in global politics. This paper is on the assumption that three decades into the demise of the Soviet Union, it is now time to reflect on the influence of Russia in international politics, with particular focus on Moscow’s foreign policy towards Sub-Saharan Africa. This rethinking is crucial because of the criticism that Russia’s renewed interest in Africa is a grand strategy to dominate affairs of the continent, rather than a search for new opportunities for economic cooperation and geopolitical alliances.