Military-Technical Cooperation between the Russian Federation and Sub-Saharan Africa: Current State and Prospects

Military-technical cooperation between Russia and Sub-Saharan Africa has been developing rapidly these days, though in the 1990s this region was unjustly left “on the sidelines” of the main vector of Russian foreign policy and foreign trade. For example, a few Russian diplomatic missions to and consulates
in Africa were closed in the 1990s. However, today, despite some remaining difficulties, the Russian Federation is paying growing attention to its policy on the African continent.

Africa is a region with a huge development potential. “Africa today is in the same position as China was in the 1990s: like a tiger before a jump”, says, for instance, Ha-Joon Chang, a professor of Cambridge University. And Russia is now returning to the region, first of all, in the economic sphere. Russian-African forum, which took place in autumn 2019 with the motto “For peace, security and development”, became an event of a very large scale and may be a turning
point in Russian-African relations. Russian President V. Putin said that it was “the first meeting of such a scale, which is a clear evidence of mutual willingness to... strengthen multidimensional partnership.” During the forum, Russia signed deals on military-technical cooperation with more than thirty African states.

Military-technical cooperation is one of the most significant areas of cooperation between Russia and Sub-Saharan Africa. As the Director of Rosoboronexport noted, for many years Russia has been maintaining the top position in terms of arms supplies to Sub-Saharan countries and intends to maintain its leadership in this sphere, despite competition from the United States and China. However, the development of Russia’s military-technical cooperation with African States is often hindered by objective reasons such as the low solvency of these countries.

The article It also analyzes the relations in the sphere of military-technical cooperation and gives prospects for such collaboration both in general and with some countries of the region in particular.

The objective of this article is to analyze the current status and the prospects of the military-technical cooperation between Russia and the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. To this end, the article considers its present state, problems and prospects, using also the examples of some countries that are developing their military-technical ties with Russia most rapidly – Sudan, Nigeria, the RSA and Mali.

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