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THE PIVOT TO AFRICA 🌍 THREAD
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Russia is taking African gold. Right. Now.
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‘From Russia With Love’: A Putin Ally Mines Gold and Plays Favorites in Sudan (Published 2022)
Backed by the Kremlin, the shadowy network known as the Wagner Group is getting rich in Sudan while helping the military to crush a democracy movement.
Antony Blinken Visits Africa, Vying With Russia for Favor on Continent Hit by Rising Food Prices
The U.S. top diplomat’s tour follows a recent visit from his Russian counterpart, with some observers pointing to a contest for ‘hearts and minds of African states.’
www.wsj.com
Antony Blinken Visits Africa, Vying With Russia for Favor on Continent Hit by Rising Food Prices
U.S. envoy’s tour follows visit from Russian counterpart; contest for ‘hearts and minds of African states’
Updated Aug. 7, 2022 8:44 am ET
The rise in food prices accelerated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine has hurt Africa, where most nations are net food importers. High fuel and food costs, drought, conflict and economic disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic are exacerbating poverty and unrest, and have driven millions to the brink of famine.
Many African countries have resisted taking sides in the war in Ukraine and dismissed Western calls to participate in sanctions targeting Moscow. Mr. Blinken’s trip, which starts in South Africa, comes amid a flurry of high-level visits to the continent from U.S. officials carrying the message that Russia’s actions in Ukraine are to blame for the food crisis.
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A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.“It’s been somewhat of a wake-up call,” said Brahima Sangafowa Coulibaly of the liberal-leaning U.S.-based think tank Brookings Institution. “African countries did not signal an overwhelming appetite to just buy into the West’s rhetoric.”
Major powers such as South Africa have declined to support United Nations resolutions condemning Russia. The African Union has complained to European leaders that paying for Russian food exports has become harder since most big Russian banks were removed from the Swift payment system.
Mr. Blinken’s tour, which will include stops in the Congo and Rwanda, will start as U.S. envoy to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield wraps up a trip to the continent. Ms. Thomas-Greenfield repeatedly blamed Russia for the food crisis in meetings with high-level officials and others during her four-day trip, according to official statements on the meetings.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited four countries at the end of July, thanking African governments for staying out of the campaign of Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine. He blamed Europe and the U.S. for high food prices and offered to sell Russian oil, despite U.S. warnings that such transactions would break Western sanctions.
“If there is a state in Africa interested in our oil, there is no obstacle to this,” Mr. Lavrov said in a news conference with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
French President Emmanuel Macron was also in West Africa at the end of July, where he accused Russia of being one of the world’s remaining colonial powers.
“Africa is becoming a space of competition around global influence, with different parties trying to really win some hearts and minds of African states, and to showcase that their positions are more beneficial to the continent,” said Gustavo de Carvalho, senior researcher on African governance and diplomacy at the South African Institute of International Affairs.
Winning influence won’t be an easy task for Mr. Blinken.
South Africa, his first stop, has carefully avoided picking sides. President Cyril Ramaphosa met virtually with Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, but isn’t scheduled to meet with Mr. Blinken. When then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited South Africa, she met with then-President Jacob Zuma. The top U.S. envoy will instead see his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor.
Pretoria’s stance is unlikely to change, said Mzukisi Qobo, who heads the Wits School of Governance at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand. One topic Ms. Pandor is likely to raise with Mr. Blinken is the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is due to expire in 2025. Like many countries on the continent, South Africa enjoys preferential access to the U.S. market for some goods, a boon for its automotive industry, in particular.
The pair might also discuss a pledge by the U.S.—along with the U.K., Germany, France and the European Union—to help mobilize $8.5 billion in financing for South Africa’s transition away from coal. Those funds are vital to Africa’s most developed economy, which has been plagued in recent weeks by power cuts lasting up to 10 hours a day.
While in South Africa, Mr. Blinken is due to set out the Biden administration’s strategy for sub-Saharan Africa, which is expected to seek a reset of relations with the continent from the strained years of the Trump administration.
Governments on the continent will be looking for more detail on a $600 billion infrastructure fund announced by the U.S. and its allies at a June summit of the Group of Seven developed economies, which is meant to rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Mr. Blinken will be received by the heads of state in Congo and Rwanda, where he will likely spend much of his time trying to ease a fresh eruption in tensions between the neighbors.
Congo’s President Félix Tshisekedi has accused Rwanda of supporting a militia that has been attacking civilians and gaining territory in mineral-rich eastern Congo, a charge that Rwanda has denied. Several U.S. senators have called on the administration to review its ties to Rwanda over its alleged support for the M23 armed group.
“The secretary will highlight the need for respect for territorial integrity and explore how the United States can support efforts to reduce tensions,” African Affairs Assistant Secretary Molly Phee told reporters ahead of the trip.
Nelleke van de Walle, project director for the Great Lakes region at the International Crisis Group, said that without a solution, the U.S. might freeze military aid to Rwanda as it did during M23’s previous rebellion in 2012-13.
Mr. Blinken might also try to build support for U.N. peacekeepers in eastern Congo. The U.N. personnel have been embroiled in occasionally violent protests over the force’s perceived failure to protect civilians. Mr. Tshisekedi’s government said it was reassessing the status of the U.N. mission, one of the world’s largest, after at least 36 people, including three peacekeepers, died in the protests over the past two weeks.
Nicolas Bariyo in Kampala, Uganda, contributed to this article.
Write to Jessica Donati at jessica.donati@wsj.com and Gabriele Steinhauser at gabriele.steinhauser@wsj.com
As African countries pivot, China seizes chance to become a major military player
Experts say China’s military engagement with African countries has become more complex and extensive as it deepens ties and expands influence with developing nations.
www.scmp.com
As African countries pivot, China seizes chance to become a major military player
Experts say China’s military engagement with African countries has become more complex and extensive as it deepens ties, expands influence China is increasing its market share of weapons sales and technical support in Africa as Russia, Western countries face new challenges
Chinese companies have massive investments in the country’s mining industry, especially in copper and cobalt, and Beijing wants those investments – and its citizens – protected.
01:51
Zambia opens memorial for Chinese railway workers who died building Africa’s Tazara line
Amid disenchantment with long-standing Western military activity in Africa, more countries like the DRC are looking to build defence ties with China and Russia.
France, for example, has recently ended its operations in Mali and the Sahel region. In its place, the Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group has begun to fill the void. Under former US president Donald Trump, Washington reduced security activities in West Africa and Somalia, though the Biden administration has tried to reverse some of those decisions. China, meanwhile, has been working to fill those gaps.
Under its non-interference policy, China has kept its troops out of direct involvement in African conflicts. However, China is one of the biggest contributors to United Nations peacekeeping missions in countries like the DRC, and China has deployed its forces in counter-piracy missions.
Chinese provinces race along Xi’s ‘green lanes’ to Africa
28 Aug 2022
Beijing has vast interests in Africa, a major destination for development loans through its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure investment programme that has helped to build ports, highways, dams and railways across the continent.Last month, at a virtual meeting of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said Beijing had continued to provide military aid and police equipment to several African countries.
Since the forum was established in 2000, China’s military engagement with African countries has become more complex and extensive, observers say.
According to Paul Nantulya, a research associate at the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defence University in Washington, China wants to increase market share in weapons sales, and is providing technical support for the development of military industries.
The two are “particularly significant given that African countries’ access to Russian export credits, and weaponry, and weapons systems is likely to decrease given the sanctions that have been levied on Russia’s military industries”, he said.
China’s State Administration for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defence now has relationships with 40 African countries, according to Nantulya, and some of its top defence firms, like China North Industries Cooperation, are major players in Africa’s arms industries.
Nantulya said China wanted assured and unfettered access to key African officials who could make decisions that were favourable to enhancing and protecting Chinese strategic interests, and perhaps even prioritise them.
He said this was accomplished through intensive and continuous relationship-building revolving around party-to-party ties, and then extending outward to other sectors, such as local governments, executive education for top leaders, and even media and public intellectuals.
“China continues to be averse to deploying soldiers in larger numbers and outside multilateral mandates such as peacekeeping, despite its expanding interests,” said Nantulya.
Beijing also wants to forge “a common language of security” with its African partners that allows it to impart models and practices, and influence and shape perspectives on African militaries and defence strategies.
“The reasoning here is: if partners can share, or at least understand China’s ideological and doctrinal perspectives, they can be more amenable to its interests,” Nantulya said.
That is why the relationship-building elements of Chinese military engagement, such as military education, exchange visits, mentoring, and party-to-party work, occur more often than military exercises.
Nantulya said that between 2003 and 2019, China conducted 294 interactions with African militaries. Of those, the vast majority (259) consisted of various types of exchanges and education. Over the same period, China conducted only 13 military exercises and 22 naval port calls.
China has developed robust military bilateral cooperation with many African countries, but the amount of arms sold or donated is not large, except for countries like Sudan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria and Zimbabwe, according to Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an emeritus professor at the department of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.
“It is often a complement to, and a competitor of, Russian or Western military equipment provided to the continent,” he said.
Cabestan said Beijing was still behind the US, Russia and France in Africa since Chinese weapons represented only 17 per cent of Africa’s arms imports. But several countries had bought frigates, coastguard vessels, artillery, training planes and helicopters from China.
Luke Patey, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said Russia has traditionally been Africa’s leading arms supplier alongside the US and France.
“But China has been playing catch up. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will challenge its capabilities to play that role in the coming years, it opens room for Chinese military equipment and arms suppliers to increase their stakes even more,” Patey said.
In the DRC, increased military cooperation may have the bonus for Beijing of easing concerns over China’s economic dominance in mining and other strategic sectors, according to Patey.
02:02
China is building a new Egyptian capital in the desert under its Belt and Road Initiative
Benjamin Barton, associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia campus, said that since the FOCAC summits began generating momentum, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had slowly but surely been establishing potent bonds with high-ranking personnel among the militaries of various African states.
Barton said China intended to foster bilateral trust with high-ranking African military personnel, exert political influence in the country in question, and drum up interest in the purchase of military hardware produced in China.
“It wants to optimally position the PLAN [People’s Liberation Army Navy] to respond to ad hoc requests for training and better position the PLAN to help protect Chinese citizens and investments in Africa,” Barton said.
According to Barton, one example is the construction of the Chinese-built military training centre in Tanzania in 2018. “Collaborating on such projects allows the PLA to exert a degree of influence over infrastructure, which shapes the type and quality of training provided to the Tanzania People’s Defence Force. In so doing, it also allows the PLA to collect precious intelligence relative to the art of warfare which feeds back into its own combat philosophies, even if only to a very minimal extent,” Barton said.
Professor Zhou Yuyuan, a senior fellow and deputy director at the Centre for West Asian and African Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said that under China’s non-interference policy, Chinese military engagements with African countries mainly relied on multilateral institutions to contribute to African peace and security, such as the UN Security Council, UN Peacekeeping and the African Union.
Under the new FOCAC commitments, China would undertake 10 peace and security help projects for Africa, Zhou said.
The projects aim to support African capacity building and fill the gap between the mandate and the capacities of African countries. “I think the main activities will focus on soft capacity building, such as cooperation on military education, training, logistic support, and military medicine,” Zhou said. He said Chinese peace philosophy was that security problems can only be solved through political dialogue and development investment.
The Biden Administration's New Africa Policy - Foreign Policy Research Institute
Imagine you’ve just been confirmed to be the US ambassador to a small country in Africa. However, before departing to take up your assignment, you learn that
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