Observers warn Africa of Russia's growing influence on the continent

As the popularity of Burkina Faso interim president Ibrahim Traore spreads across the African continent, a picture of him meeting Russian leader Vladimir Putin in May (2025) made rounds causing speculation about the role of Russia in Burkinabe political affairs and by extension other parts of the continent.

British Broadcasting Corporation reported about Russia’s involvement in the October 2022 coup in the West Africa troubled republic especially after celebrating youths waved Russian flags in the streets of the Capital, Ouagadougou. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch close to Putin and the founder of the Wagner Group - a shadowy mercenary organisation active in several African countries - congratulated the young junta leader, describing him as "a truly worthy and courageous son of his motherland" BBC reported.

Skeptics however, warn African countries against trusting Russia and swallowing its overtures hook line and sinker. Ukrainian journalist Oleksii Bobrovnykov in his 2024 book Red Zone, which is described as a continuation of his documentary series about Kremlin’s tactics of destabilization illustrates excesses of Russia’s ensnare of new territory with a message that; as opposed to western powers whose colonial era left a semblance of political structures and a new way of life for their ‘subjects’ Russia has a history of leaving nothing or trouble after conquest or friendly associations.

In Kenya a country whose top officials declare good relations with Russia, a fake video of Traore admonishing African leaders at a supposed African head of State Summit went viral on new media building into Traore’s growing popularity against heavy criticism from Western powers. 

Even though the video was fake, the interest it generated spoke volumes about an emerging feeling among youthful Kenyans of growing skepticism about western powers and would support emerging new leaders irrespective of the foreign power behind them. This happens at a time President William Ruto continues to be hit by a sinking image -blamed for using crude methods to handle dissent which has increased bloodshed in the country, heavy taxes, a bad environment for business even as men and women close to power grow richer by the day.

Observers now say Russia has kept getting a listening ear in the African continent which is caused by missteps by western powers. American Political Scientists William Decourt and Spencer Warren, both keen students of Africa relations with the West and Russia have noted in their latest publication; Western missteps in Africa are creating an opening for Russia to deepen its influence that IMF’s austerity measures are driving the continent to economic crisis. 

Because of such measures, they argue, some African countries see China as a viable alternative, although public opinion of Chinese influence is mixed. 

“Elsewhere, faded Cold War memories make Russia a relatively unknown economic and political alternative” They say, adding “So, while recent Western actions in Africa have put long term relationships at risk, Russia is slowly increasing its influence on the continent.”

Decourt and and Warren argue that recent protests against International Monetary Fund (IMF)-imposed austerity measures have rocked several African states. 

“Kenya a long-time partner of the United States and a key contributor to UN peacekeeping operations in Haiti, experienced violent clashes between government security forces and anti-austerity protestors over tax hikes in a controversial finance bill” They say in the publication adding  “ Simultaneously, many protesters saw Kenyan engagement in Haiti as footing the bill for American security interests while ordinary Kenyans struggled to make ends meet. Soon after, similar protests against IMF measures spread to Nigeria. Analysts and locals are concerned that spreading protests may threaten stability across Africa”.

In January(2025) CNN reported that while Russian ally Bashar al-Assad was being toppled by rebels in Syria, another friend of Moscow, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, was being chaperoned by Kremlin-backed mercenaries in the conflict-ridden Central African Republic (CAR), where armed groups are yearning to oust him.

In a sign of the importance Russia places on its relationships in Africa, Putin met with Touadéra in Moscow, in what were the Russian president’s first international talks in 2025.

As Russia’s foothold in Africa expands – notably in the mineral-rich Sahel region that is beset by recurring coups, armed rebellion and extremist insurgency – anti-Western sentiments, partly fueled by Russian propaganda, are engineering the exit of Western troops from swathes of territory. The Kremlin is the most favored to fill the vacuum they leave, said CNN.

Ivory Coast and Chad are the latest in a string of former French colonies in West and Central Africa to demand the withdrawal of French and other Western forces from their territories, treading in the path of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso. Those three, all now controlled by juntas, have since turned to Russia for security support, ignoring calls from their Western ex-partners for a swift return to civilian rule.

Burkina Faso’s Traore, has overseen a significant shift in his country's foreign policy towards Russia. A year or so after taking power through a peaceful coup he reopened the Russian embassy in Ouagadougou (December 2023) which had been closed since 1992. That was followed by the signing of agreements on non-use of weapons in space. This rapprochement with Russia has been part of a broader trend of Burkina Faso distancing itself from traditional Western allies, particularly France, and seeking closer ties with Russia, as well as other African nations and China.

Bobrovnykov in Red Zone warns about such moves arguing they are a trap set by Moscow- which has been its method since Tsarist regimes of bygone days.

He argues that whether such relations come out of invasion as happened in 2014 with  annexation of the Crimean peninsula or full scale invasion as was with Ukraine in February 2022 or friendly associations as is happening to many African countries, Russia has had an history of plunder, disturbing  available structures and letting loose big cartels reflected in Wagner Group operations in Africa.

In a case study of the Russia-Georgia war of 2008 where held the South Ossetia region of Georgia Bobronykov writes;

‘When the war ends, start to worry,’ reads the headline of a New York Times article devoted to one of Russia's key ‘grey zones’ and published just days after the end of the war in Georgia in August 2008”.

"South Ossetia is a hotbed of organised crime. It is a market for a whole range of contraband goods, from petrol, cigarettes and flour to hard drugs, weapons, people and, more recently, counterfeit dollars. One hundred billion counterfeit dollars were “minted” right in the conflict zone. Because South Ossetia lies within Georgia's internationally recognised borders, the Georgian authorities do not recognise South Ossetia's borders and therefore refuse to set up posts there for normal border control" 

Bobronykov writes of territories that have come victim of Russia’s thirst for territories such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Moldovan Transnistria, the Ukrainian Donbas saying “neither was fully absorbed by the modern Russian empire. Years later, they would become important links in the system of other “gray zones” whose functioning would be aimed at destabilizing the Black Sea basin and creating smuggling enclaves with similar separatist reservations around the world; they would become links in a kind of parallel shadow economy”

In 2023 American television CBS (Caribbean Broadcasting System) reported the plunder that the Russian aided Wagner Group was causing in different parts of Africa to aid Moscow’s war efforts against Ukraine.

CBS said Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin had used his forces to prop up some unsavory regimes in Africa in exchange for free reign to plunder the valuable resources of mineral rich countries including Mali, Sudan and Libya. But it's in the small nation of the Central African Republic (CAR) that his business model had been horned to perfection. 

In Bangui ,  CAR, the Russians went as far as running a well -organized propaganda machine through creative arts including funding a film as well as having the government build a statue in honor of mercenaries’ leader Prigozhin and his close circle.

Titled "Tourist" the film was aired in the capital in 2021. It was produced by a company linked to Prigozhin and the Wagner Group and depicted Russian mercenaries as protectors of the country against rebels. The premiere taking place in Barthélemy Boganda stadium was a large-scale event, with the movie dubbed into the local Sango language. 

What Wagner would not say, however, was that it was effectively helping to run CAR through violence, disinformation and a galaxy of shell companies that obscure the exploitation of the country's mineral riches. 

The exploitation did not end with sucking out minerals from CAR’s earth alone, it went further affecting families of the hapless poor in the villages of the republic. 

In July 2024 the Guardian reported that Russian Mercenaries had become the biggest threat to farming activities because of waylaying women in the farms and raping them. 

In a story titled; They turn our farms into rape centers; Russian mercenaries accused of abuse in Central African Republic, the paper reported a rise in sexual violence that had disrupted farming activities since women in the country were the cornerstone of agricultural productivity – they feared venturing to their farms.

Allegations of rape by mercenaries, who had a large presence in CAR’s restive north-west region, had escalated in the months of June July 2024. Women and girls avoided the fields and markets, leading to food shortages, Said the Gaurdian.

In and around Bouar, a market town in the western CAR  on the main road from the country’s capital, Bangui, to the border with Cameroon, traders who buy crops directly from farmers told the paper’s reporters that they had listened to numerous young women tell how they were raped in farms by “white soldiers” –which was the local reference to Russian mercenaries.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), reported increased rape cases during the time the Russian mercenaries were running operations in CAR between 2018 and 2022. During the same period, the UN documented close to 15,000 other cases of sexual violence in the country.