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In the hydrocarbon, gas and oil sectors, a handful of Russian companies have become strong in Africa, such as Rosneft, Gazprom and above all the giant Lukoil, headed until a week ago by the billionaire tycoon Vagit Alekperov, who opposed the war in a statement and resigned two months later. These companies are present in countries such as Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria.
From private business to state interest

The link between private businesses and the interests of the Russian state is close and evident in examples such as Alexandre Brégadzé, who is head of Rusal in Guinea, but also an architect and a former ambassador who trained at the Moscow Diplomatic Academy. The security sector also shows these relationships. The activities of the obscure Wagner mercenary group, which is present in Libya, Mozambique, Sudan, the Central African Republic and now also in Mali, are easily confused with those of the Russian Army itself and the group even uses the army’s means of transportation. According to Western intelligence services, Wagner is financed by Putin’s so-called chef, a businessman named Yevgheni Prighozin who has also been sanctioned by the US and the EU, and who met the Russian president when the latter dined at his restaurant in St. Petersburg.

More than a third of the weapons that Africa buys come from Russia, its main supplier, according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, and the two main recipient countries of this weaponry are Egypt and Algeria, but there are others such as Nigeria, Sudan, Angola and Mali. The equipment includes fighter-type aircraft, helicopters, assault craft, tanks, ammunition and air defense systems. The contracts between the state company Rosoboronexport and 20 African countries cover every kind of weapon these days.

Through these deals, African countries with dictatorial or military regimes that are under Western sanctions – such as Mali now, but also Libya or Zimbabwe during the Robert Mugabe regime – can gain access to weapons that other countries deny them.

“Russia is leaning on the image created in Africa by the Soviet Union, at a time when Moscow supported many liberation movements, trained students and built hospitals. It is perceived as a kind of older brother, a defender of Africa’s sovereignty, embodying an alternative development model to the Western one. But this idealized vision does not match the geopolitical and moral realities of today’s Russia that has unleashed the war in Ukraine,” adds Smirnova, from Centre FrancoPaix.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, under which tens of thousands of young African doctors, architects, engineers and soldiers were trained by the great power, relations plummeted. But a little over a decade ago, Putin himself inspired a triumphant comeback that reached a climax at the Russia-Africa summit held in Sochi in 2019, attended by as many as 45 heads of state from the African continent. A second meeting in Moscow is planned for 2022.

https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-05/weapons-mercenaries-and-trade-deals-russia-grows-stronger-in-africa.html