What drives Russia's involvement in Africa? [An Afrocentric review of Russia–South Africa relations, 2000–2018

Abstract

Russia's engagement with African governments has been a subject of debate amongst scholars of International Public Affairs and other cognate academic disciplines since the demise of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This is a result of different approaches in Russia's engagement with African governments since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. To this end, Russia's engagement with African states is multi‐dimensional, ranging from political, economic (mining and energy sectors) and security factors. In order to locate the key drivers of Russia's Africa Policy towards an individual state, this qualitative study provided an Afrocentric review to assess the post‐Cold War Russia's Africa policy paying special reference to Russia–South Africa relations. Afrocentricity is the theoretical paradigm employed to review the nature of Russia's Africa Policy towards South Africa. The authors rely methodologically on document review methods.