Dragonfly (part of FiscalNote)’s Post

Transcript

Tell us a bit more about what Russia strategic objectives are with regards to Africa, but also more broadly and and what what's driving their engagement across the African continent. Well, thank you. The obvious one is for resources. That's one of its goals, including critical materials such as cobalt, which used in batteries. Which, uh, which it gets access to in return for security services to local regimes, but after western sanctions and other factor is access to markets because of the restrictions on it's access are going to the Ukraine war. But I think the most important of its objectives is geopolitical. In particular, it wants to be able to be seen to challenge the Western. The post World War Two Liberal Democratic order because aside from the its place on the Security Council, it no longer will the Russian elite no longer feel they have much benefit from the system as it exists. So the proximate drivers of this are first of all the rupturing in ties with the West, which began in 2014 but accelerated in 2022, and Russia's. Eight power ideology, which is a way of seeing the world and understand the way the Russian elite understands itself. So in this context. Um, Russia's activity in Africa, um, allows it to not to be seen to be isolated. So the West attempt to isolate it allows it to show that this hasn't been effective. It allows it to push its alternative concept to the western dominated world order, which is the multipolar world, often using anti and anti colonial narrative, which resonates in Africa partly because. In large part because of the history of Western colonialism, but it allows the Russians access because of their former hold there in in Soviet times. And at the same time, I would say possibly one of the other aspects it does, it shows that whilst it's been weakened in its home territory in the former Soviet Union by the war in Ukraine, it's able to extend its influence elsewhere. So there's several important. Areas spreading out from the Ukraine war but into this wider geopolitical conflict that that helped to explain it, I would say. OK. Thanks David. And we're going to move on in in due course to talking about how. Particular Russia is trying to actually achieve those objectives within specific countries in Africa. But I think before we do, I think pick up on one of the points that you mentioned, David, is about how Russian narratives resonate and, and, and sort of are, are, um, sort of perceived within different countries in different ways across the continent. So I want to first of all, flying whether you could talk to the extent to which Russia is perceived within Africa. Is there any insight that we have around perceptions of, of Russia and whether or not they've changed in recent times? Yeah, so Gallup actually released a poll in April looking at how the main world powers are perceived in the different regions across the world. Uh, unsurprisingly, Russia's approval fell in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine worldwide, but in Africa, the approval of Russia remained 2 times larger than in the rest of the of the world. As David has said, this is due to long standing relations that date back to the USSR era and the Cold War. Anyway, in 202342 of Americans are sorry not Americans but Africans polled said that they approved of Russia's leadership when only 34% of them disapprove of it. This is the biggest score worldwide and the approval rating is back on par with what it was pre Ukraine invasion in Africa. However, and still based on the Gallop polling, because it is the one of the best measures that we have. China and the US maintain a better reputation in Africa than Russia. The largest approval of Russia's leadership in Africa was unsurprisingly coming from Burkina Faso and Mali, and a bit more surprising was from Chad, but we will come back to that a bit later. Political elites in Africa appear to have a good approval of Russia. The Gallup poll looks at me like the populations approval of a country. Political elites however, as I said, have a good approval of Russia and its leadership. This is due to long standing relationships with the USSR supporting African nations and their struggle for independence, for example the case of South Africa. Has South Africa is quite quite neutral on the way on the war on Ukraine, but supports Russia in in other ways as the USSR always condemned the apartheid regime unlike other global powers. But we also have other political elites who see Russia as a means to an end to get rid of what they call their imperialist mat masters. Uh, this is the case of many leaders who are pan Africanists, such as the fragrances in the sale, so Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Um, they see Russia as the Liberator and do not see Russia as a new type of imperialist. Uh, probably due to the fact that Russia did not have a colonial past per se. These positive views are shown by the attendance to the Russia Africa Summit in July 2023 in Sochi. Though there were few were heads of state than during the first summer in 2019, more countries were presented. Uh, despite Russia's war in Ukraine having a negative impact for most of these countries, especially on the price of food, only 10 out of 54 African countries did not attend, one of which was Niger. But it is worth noting that the Russia Africa Summit took place a day after the coup, so it was still in the middle of the coup. Uh, the other ones that did not attend were Botswana, Captivate, Could, Devoir, Eswatini, Gabon, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritius, Sotoyome, Sierra Leone and Togo. So no real big hitters, big powers ball, if we don't count Kenya and Cote d'Ivoire in there.