Russia’s Sahel approach responds to terrorism and fragile regimes – a very different scenario to its Southern Africa ties.

As the war in Ukraine continues, Moscow is prioritising bilateral engagements with African nations to counter the political and economic fallout of Western attempts to isolate Russia. The continent has evolved from a largely peripheral consideration in Russian foreign policy to a key geopolitical theatre. Though this trend began before 2022, the war has accelerated it.

Moscow’s engagement varies across Africa, and these distinctions reveal the opportunities and limitations of its growing continental footprint. In the Sahel, for example, Russia has capitalised on insecurity and regime fragility – a very different approach to Southern Africa, where its ties are less transactional and longer-standing.

The West’s biggest concern is how Moscow has used its bilateral security assistance in an increasing number of African nations. Through government channels and state-backed military contractors, Russia has deepened its political influence. In Burkina Faso, Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Mali, Niger and Sudan, among others, it has become a major security partner.

While Russia derives symbolic and broad geopolitical benefits, such as an emboldened international profile, these engagements are mostly opportunistic and transactional. Its expanded security assistance appears driven by some African leaders’ concerns about regime survival on the one hand, and Russia’s access to critical natural resources on the other.

Relations with these states are accompanied by targeted media and disinformation campaigns that frame security cooperation as a response to the failures and malign intent of Western security partners. This allows Moscow to promote its worldview of a shifting international order, aligning with many African governments’ misgivings and disillusionment with a United States-led, Western-dominated global system.

This approach has gained the greatest traction across the Sahel and Central Africa. Following a wave of coups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger between 2020-23, the juntas ejected their traditional Western partners. Moscow – via the state-supported Wagner group and then Africa Corps – stepped into the breach. In return for servicing the military regimes’ security needs, Russia has gained mining concessions and favourable long-term mineral supply contracts.

This playbook was refined through earlier engagements in Sudan and the CAR, where Wagner established a wide array of security and commercial ties with elite political networks beginning in 2017 and 2018.

In the CAR, Wagner personnel quickly embedded themselves within Bangui’s corridors of power. Through access to the country’s political elites, apparent commercial quid pro quos followed. A similar request by former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in 2017 led to Wagner providing security assistance to Sudan in exchange for access to lucrative mining concessions.

In recent years, Moscow has looked to Equatorial Guinea (by deploying military instructors to support President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo’s regime in late 2024), Togo (a military cooperation agreement in 2025), Guinea and the Republic of the Congo (visits from Russia’s foreign affairs minister in 2024), among others.

Southern Africa is far less receptive to this commercial-security quid pro quo playbook. Besides Mozambique, which saw a short-lived Wagner intervention against terrorists in Cabo Delgado in 2019, no countries in the region have made the kinds of arrangements prevalent further north. This is likely because regime survival and stability are less tenuous than in the Sahel and Central Africa.

Nonetheless, Moscow’s influence in Southern Africa is bolstered by other, more long-standing factors, including liberation-era political ties. South Africa is a particularly special case. It maintains strong relations with Moscow based on a reservoir of political capital garnered through Soviet-era support for the dominant African National Congress.

This historical political capital extends to other governments in the region led by liberation parties, including Angola and Mozambique. Despite recent electoral setbacks, the dominance of liberation-era political parties in Southern Africa provides a significant anchor point for bilateral relations with Moscow.

Accordingly, Russia’s security footprint in the region is grounded in deeper political and military networks and appears less transactional compared to its Sahel engagements. Russia’s presence in Southern Africa is more institutionalised and rooted in strategic partnership agreements, military cooperation deals, training exchanges, joint naval exercises, arms sales and technical military support.

Barring North Africa, Moscow’s economic relationships in Southern Africa are also more comprehensive compared to the rest of the continent, even if limited to certain sectors. State-backed companies including Rosatom, ALROSA and Rosoboronexport have been especially prominent, with interests and operations spanning mining, energy and defence.

These distinctions suggest a dual-track approach that underscores both the opportunism and limits of Russia’s Africa policy. Moscow’s influence has grown markedly in unstable, conflict-prone states in the Sahel and Central Africa. But its more sustainable partnerships remain those grounded in historical solidarity and political networks nurtured over time.

As Moscow seeks to deepen its African engagements, its bilateral ties based primarily on short-term transactional interests may flounder as political or security dynamics in African states change. Clients or patrons are easily interchangeable in this context, leaving little chance to build long-term strategic partnerships.

Moscow could seek to replicate its Southern African approach elsewhere across Africa. But can the Kremlin resist the temptation of short-term gains in an increasingly fragmented and unpredictable world?

This article is an abridged version of a chapter published in a compendium by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Russia Eurasia Centre.

Written by Priyal Singh, Senior Researcher, Africa in the World, ISS Pretoria