How Putin won Africa leaders' hearts with his ice cream diplomacy

Diplomacy is essentially an art that comes in many guises, ranging from cultivating the ability to deal with complicated matters involving other entities without sacrificing core interests. It calls for practitioners to have high levels of common sense reinforced by a good command of three types of knowledge that are critical to the wellbeing of a given entity.

The three are knowledge of the self, knowledge of the other party that one has to deal with, and knowledge of the points of interest convergence and divergence. They need to have special skills in flattery, double-dealing, the ability to play hardball, possess language and related verbal prowess, and be gifted in the sense of timing. The strategies in use include political, financial, commerce, military, romance, and the newly introduced Russian “ice cream” diplomacy.

Before ice-cream diplomacy, there had been other captivating types of diplomacy that had lasting global impact. They included the two opposites of romance diplomacy and gunboat diplomacy. In ancient Jerusalem, romance diplomacy was associated with King Solomon, who reportedly used romantic charms to defray potential conflicts. He married many ‘princesses’ and ended up with roughly a thousand wives. The best-known of Solomon’s romantic attractions involved the Queen of Sheba, who reportedly went to Jerusalem to see the man of many wives and then walked back to give birth to the first Menelik. Menelik presumably created the Abyssinian Empire, which, almost three thousand years later, collapsed in 1974 when Haile Selassie was overthrown.

On its part, gunboat diplomacy was mostly a 19th- and early 20th-century tool of power assertion before the International Monetary Fund and World Bank arrived to impose ‘structural adjustment’ programmes on delinquent countries. Imperialist countries such as Britain and the United States used gunboats as effective instruments of imposing their wishes on others. Britain used it to occupy Egypt and was then reluctant to leave. In the US, Teddy Roosevelt used gunboat diplomacy to claim the Caribbean for the United States and Woodrow Wilson invaded Veracruz to teach Mexicans to salute and show respect to Americans.

Ice-cream diplomacy, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s contribution to types of diplomacy, is an effective tool of enticement at small cost. He invited African heads of state and government to Moscow, with African Union Chairman Evariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi in the lead, for the Third Russia-Africa Summit. The first such summit had been in 2019 at Sochi, the second in 2023 at St. Petersburg.

At least 22 leaders showed up for the third summit in Moscow, took photos with Putin, and ate Russian ice cream. It was an assembly of people whose past utterances had either raised eyebrows or had attracted assorted attention. They included Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Eritrea’s Isaias Afewarqe and, most importantly, William Ruto of Kenya.

Ruto’s presence was surprising given that he had scathingly dismissed the second 2019 Russia-Africa Summit as demeaning and a waste of time. He was there in the crowd of African leaders lining up to receive the Putin ice-cream. Russia’s ice cream diplomacy, after the February 2022 outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War, contended with Ukraine’s belated effort to lure African countries. Seemingly guided by the West, which did not help Ukraine, on how to treat Africans, Ukraine adopted a condescending attitude when addressing Africans and also scuttled initial empathy when its officials mistreated Africans trying to escape the war. In addition, Ukraine sending fighters to aid some groups in Mali simply weakened Ukrainian diplomacy, self-destructing it more than before.

The Russians took advantage of Ukraine’s self-inflicted diplomatic wounds to look reasonable and respectful to Africans. Organising ice cream eating was one way of appealing to African leaders. Peculiarly missing were South Africa, Burkina Faso, and Uganda, three countries that had attended the 2023 St. Petersburg summit. Kenya’s Ruto, not complaining about the summoning of African leaders, enjoyed ice cream diplomacy in Moscow. He wants to be in Putin’s good books.