Russia eyeing Africa’s resources

Opinion

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This article was published 27/03/2024 (563 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Russia has embraced a war-time economy to finance its attempted conquest of Ukraine. Despite a torrent of Western sanctions, average Russian incomes have doubled and joblessness is nearing record lows, mostly thanks to the Kremlin’s military-industrial complex running at full tilt. However, such feverish state-centric production is sustainable for only so long.

Moscow is now trying to offset the situation by locking in foreign sources of revenue — in particular, those that come at Western expense. One prized option appears to be the most lucrative gold operations in Mali, owned by Canadian mining company Barrick Gold.

Russia has displaced former colonial ruler France as the preferred benefactor of Mali’s junta regime, which — with some public support — overthrew civilian governments in both 2020 and 2021. Frustrations have mounted in the impoverished West African country over the past decade as multiple corrupt administrations failed to halt the spread of violent jihadism and improve living standards.

Shortly after taking office, Mali’s military leaders began moving to evict UN peacekeepers and Western counterterrorism forces present in the country. In their place, the government in Bamako hired Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group — a private paramilitary network founded by the late Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

This arrangement emulated the resource-for-protection model pioneered in recent years by Prigozhin. Brittle autocracies elsewhere in Africa have enlisted Wagner’s services to guard infrastructure sites, train their security forces, conduct brutal counterinsurgency operations and orchestrate digital propaganda campaigns. In return for propping them up, cash-strapped authoritarian governments paid for these private Russian armies by granting business concessions and resource export licenses to shell companies linked to Prigozhin.

But Prigozhin died last August in a suspicious plane crash widely considered an assassination ordered by Vladimir Putin, after the Wagner chief led an armed uprising toward Moscow two months earlier. The mercenary outfit has since been absorbed by the Kremlin and placed under the control of Russian military intelligence.

Previously, the Wagner Group under Prigozhin afforded Putin the benefit of plausible deniability of its illicit activities, despite how the network clearly operated in line with Russian interests. However, now that it has been rebranded as Russia’s “Africa Corps” and become an instrument of the state, the Wagner Group’s connections are being formalized within bilateral relations between Moscow and its African clients.

In Mali, one of Africa’s largest gold producers, the government has begun overhauling national mining codes and pressuring foreign companies to renegotiate their contracts. Officials say this is being done simply to ensure a larger portion of mineral proceeds are retained domestically.

Observers, however, suggest the ultimate goal is to push foreign companies out of Mali and transfer their assets to Russian firms. This in-kind payment could erase the debts owed to Moscow for the services of Russian troops, enabling the military junta to maintain its grip on power.

Targeted assets reportedly include those belonging to Barrick Gold. Headquartered in Toronto, the company is Mali’s top taxpayer, contributing over US$ 200 million per year to Bamako’s coffers. Barrick executives have so far refused to comment on the future of its two main sites in Mali that generate a combined 20 million tonnes of gold per year — roughly one third of the country’s total annual gold production worth US$3.5 billion.

Russia has also been implicated in sophisticated gold smuggling schemes in Sudan, a country being torn apart by civil war. In the Central African Republic, the Kremlin has inherited a web of economic entities established by the Wagner Group that include not only gold mines, but diamond and timber exporters, plus an expansive brewery and distillery business. Researchers estimate Russia has earned at least US$2.5 billion in gold revenue alone in Africa since Moscow launched its full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

An expert from the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, recently suggested that Moscow’s evolving modus operandi in Africa reveals a larger, overarching strategy. “We are now observing the Russians attempting to strategically displace Western control of access to critical minerals and resources,” Dr. Jack Watling told the BBC in late February. “In Niger the Russians are endeavouring to gain a similar set of concessions that would strip French access to the uranium mines in the country,” he added. Niger recently announced it is ending its military cooperation deal with the United States.

Western sanctions have so far had mixed success at degrading the Kremlin’s war machine in Ukraine. Yet isolating Russia will become even more difficult if it continues to gain influence and control over valuable resources in some of the world’s most dangerous and forgotten places.

Kyle Hiebert is a Winnipeg-based researcher and analyst, and former deputy editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor.