World
Russia Improving Beneficial Ties With Africa
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Most of African political leaders are now reacting to post-Soviet politics and emerging economic possibilities in Russia. With emerging multipolarism, some leaders are already adapting to the fast-changing situation and adjusting policies that would support their development goals and effectively work on their election pledges. Despite the internal development hurdles, the majority are shifting from the Western and European alliances, looking forward towards cooperating with countries in the Global South.
Professor Vladimir Shubin, Institute for African Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences, has raised some serious issues in Russian-African relations that need careful consideration. In the first place, inside Africa, there is clear evidence that most of the political leaders are now reacting to post-Soviet politics and emerging economic possibilities in Russia. President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin authorities have also moved progressively with a new phase in consolidating political ties at the state levels with Africa. In order to maintain this relationship, African countries have to pay high attention to and take significant steps in promoting their achievements and highlighting their most development needs.
Professor Shubin’s interview on political relations between Russia and Africa as well as economic cooperation will attract more and more practical academic discussions. Such scholarly contributions, in essence, help deepen understanding of the problems that mitigate building a solid relationship or partnership with Russia. In the past, the emphasis was strongly put on political ideology, but now, that has largely changed and it’s obvious that increased economic cooperation is the main determining factor, especially in the fields of mining, transportation, infrastructure construction, industry, agriculture, and tourism.
These have to be placed, step by step, on a new basis of mutual interests. What is abundantly clear is how to stimulate African governments into exploring investment opportunities in Russia and Russian investors into Africa within some framework of cooperation. It is also worthy to say that Russia has played roles in Africa and Africans have to work towards good governance, adopt good development strategies and seek improved welfare for the population. Equally interesting is the Asian States are moving faster than Africa and consequently the development gap is widening.
As correctly pointed out by Professor Vladimir Shubin in this wide-ranging interview with Kestér Kenn Klomegâh, certain developments, and approaches, however, provide a basis for criticisms and for pessimistic views as to what extent, these ideas can be realised for Africa. The world continues watching developments. Interview excerpts here:
In the Cold War era, Africa was an ideological playing field for the United States and the then-Soviet Union, but all these changed after the Soviet collapse. What are your comments relating to the relationship between Russia and Africa?
Indeed, the style of work and its intensity are quite different in the case of the first president Boris Yeltsin and his successor Vladimir Putin. I would not attribute the reasons for the marked changes just to personalities. One should not look at Russia today as something “monolithic” tightly directed from the Kremlin, as the USSR used to be at some stage. Different political forces are competing for power in the country or, at least, for influence over it. These forces represent the interests of various diverse political and social groups that also need to be carefully analysed within a particular context.
This is true for foreign policy as well, even if according to “Yeltsin’s Constitution” of 1993, the President determines the main foreign policy directions. Concerning Africa, there are significant forces in Russia, which stand for the further development of bilateral relations and stronger economic cooperation. They include not only traditional friends of Africa on the left side of the political spectrum but take Russian industrialists who are interested in exporting their manufactured goods to African countries or in exploring its mineral resources.
Does the Kremlin have an agenda for Africa? How would you defend the affirmative position, citing examples?
That is quite interesting. I have never heard about a special Moscow’s “agenda” for Africa, but one should proceed from the “Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation” approved by Putin soon after his election to the post. Africa occupies a decent, albeit modest place. Putin several times spoke about Russia’s involvement in African affairs. Putin said: “As to Russia, traditionally with the African continent, we’ve got very good relations. We subtly feel all the problems of the African continent…I must say Russia’s contribution is very noticeable in dealing with the problems of Africa.”
Among other things related to the writing off part of the debts of African countries, Russia makes very great contributions: we take part in humanitarian programmes and, in particular, in health programmes. We grant African countries a considerable amount of scholarships for studying in higher educational institutions in Russia and plan to carry on this programme in the future. Russia’s assistance to African countries is multi-pronged and we are convinced that this activity ultimately meets the national interests of the Russian Federation.
What would you like to suggest if you were to advise the Kremlin administration’s policy approach towards African countries? What are your opinions about the future of Russian-African relations?
Africa has great potential for our bilateral relationships. Truly and firstly, in the political sphere, there are hardly any sharp controversies between Russia and African countries. Agreeably, the relations in other spheres, especially in economic cooperation, are lagging. Thus, the bilateral trade is many times less than that of China, India and many foreign countries with Africa.
I am not sure that “Kremlin administrators” often ask for advice from the academic community. But some steps are overdue, such as Putin’s working visit to Africa, south of the Sahara. Russian banks are making initial steps in operating in Africa, while the lack of credit facilities has been the major obstacle to the successful development of economic ties. However, Russia needs genuine and objective information about modern Africa, and here both state and private mass media linger a lot.
Has Russia identified its role in any of the African regional organisation’s programmes aimed towards the development goals of Africa?
One should always remember that Moscow feels the problems of the African continent, perhaps better than some other “developed countries” – both because of its history of cooperation with African countries and because it often faces similar development problems. However, with these trends, I am not sure that African diplomacy pays enough attention to Russia. Moreover, I think that a considerably good part of it is under the influence of Western propaganda, which does its best to portray Moscow as the backyard of Europe. On the other hand, Moscow’s capacity to carry out practical steps in cooperation with African countries is limited by its internal economic problems
Nevertheless, we can mention Russia’s continuous active involvement practically in all UN peace-keeping missions in Africa, Russia’s significant contributions to the international fund on combating, for instance, tuberculosis, malaria and other tropical diseases as Russia’s indication of interest in Africa, but we also want African leaders to show, with clarity, their interests in Russia. It should not be just one-way traffic.
In your critical assessment, what African leaders be seen doing if they want to get out of their multiple problems and practically get integrated into the global community?
It is not for a Russian academic to advise African governments. However, some things look obvious. Africa can play an important and fair role in the “globalising world” only if the continent really “globalises” itself, first by effectively strengthening its continental and regional cooperation to be able to speak in one voice. All true friends of Africa welcomed the creation of the African Union, but it remains to be seen how practically effective this organisation will be.
Unfortunately, some of the recent events and developments there and the African Union’s political approach do not allow us to be too optimistic. There is a lot of pessimism about how far the African Union idea can go and what it can achieve for the continent. This depends largely on the political attitudes of the people themselves. The funniest thing is that whenever there are problems in Africa, the leaders fly to Europe in search of assistance.
Do the African politicians realise that they have or must help Africa to develop? For example, even after the establishment of the African Union, there were appeals for outside forces to solve intra-African conflicts. Even more disturbing is a lack of consistency in the approach to the most crucial international issues. Africans have to acknowledge the fact that the world has progressively changed and they must be seen changing at a similar positive pace. It’s about time Africans took development issues seriously and worked progressively towards establishing good governance and drastically seeking improvement in the welfare of its large impoverished population.
Relations are supposed to be a two-way road (street). Do you think some African political leaders are also not up to expectations in their relations with Russia? What should they be seen doing to raise friendly ties with Russia?
I cannot say that African leaders do their best in developing bilateral relations. Truly and passionately, they come to Russia more often than ten years ago, but a lot still has to be done. Perhaps, one of the reasons why some African leaders “write off” Russia is the lack of information about Russia or rather plenty of distorted information they have received from the Western media coverage of Russia. Moreover, some of the foreign journalists writing from here for African media cause damage to the bilateral relations.
Now and then, speaking to African diplomats in Moscow, I often joke: “Some of you are accredited not to Russia, but to the African diplomatic corps” in Moscow. It is a bitter joke, but it reflects reality. While some of the embassies are actively promoting their countries and are winning friends for Africa, others are hardly visible, even for African scholars here.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
To serve rising global customer demand for responsibly sourced natural rubber, Olam Agri has acquired Asia Africa Rubber Industry SA (ASAF).
The acquisition is expected to unlock synergies across the company’s global logistics, supply chain, trading and marketing network, strengthening the supply of responsibly sourced rubber to key export markets. It also increases access to international rubber customers through ASAF’s existing strategic partnerships.
It was gathered that the takeover of ASAF helps Olam Agri to scale its rubber processing capabilities in Côte d’Ivoire, as the former adds about 176,000 metric tonnes (MT) to the latter’s annual rubber processing capacity in the country, giving the company greater scale in the country and geographic density that improves operational efficiency and supply reliability.
In addition, the acquisition advances Olam Agri’s commitment to sustainable, traceable natural rubber.
Additional processing capacity and greater oversight over origination in Côte d’Ivoire enable the organisation to extend plot-level traceability and responsible-sourcing standards. This will support its customers’ due-diligence and deforestation-free supply chain requirements as regulatory and buyer expectations continue to rise.
Global natural rubber consumption is driven by automotive and industrial applications, with annual demand of around 14–15 million MT.
Industry forecasts point to sustained long-term demand for technically specified natural rubber (TSR). Côte d’Ivoire has grown into the world’s third-largest producer of natural rubber and exporter of TSR, driven by a significant scale-up of rubber cultivation and local processing capacity.
“The acquisition of ASAF marks an important milestone for our rubber business. Over the past five years, we have expanded processing capacity in Côte d’Ivoire more than four-fold through sustained investment across the value chain.
“ASAF builds on that progress and reflects our long-term commitment to investing in the country.
“As demand for traceable and responsibly sourced natural rubber continues to climb, we are well-positioned to provide customers with the quality, consistency and service they require,” the chief executive of Fibre, Agri Industrials and Ag Services at Olam Agri, Ashok Hegde, stated.
Also commenting, the Global Head of Rubber at Olam Agri, Vijeth Shetty, said, “ASAF is a strong strategic fit with our rubber operations in Côte d’Ivoire. Its processing operations, sourcing network and customer relationships complement our business, improving efficiency, deepening our capabilities across the value chain and broadening our reach in key markets.
“We are excited to welcome ASAF’s employees into Olam Agri and to build on the solid foundations they have established.”
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A $1 million funding package has been secured by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup, Echovane, to expand its market research platform.
The fresh capital would be used by the company to build AI agents that execute market research end-to-end, used by Fortune-500 firms, including P&G, Haleon, and Kantar.
Echovane will utilise the funds, co-led by Titan Capital and Neon Fund, to make complex market research a done-for-you AI-native service.
The platform is built on the premise that AI should take on the machinery of research while researchers retain control over the judgment. The result should be faster execution without sacrificing rigour, traceability or trust.
Echovane was founded by former Amazon, Stripe, Gojek and Razorpay product leaders and graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, Smriti Gupta, Vipul Nair and Himadri Roy.
They initially set out to build an AI moderator for consumer interviews. But the deeper they went, the clearer it became that the interview was only a fraction of the problem. Research teams were still spending weeks recruiting participants, coordinating fieldwork, analysing evidence and turning it into something the business could act on.
So, the founders expanded Echovane into the execution layer for the entire research process.
“We thought better AI interviews would unlock faster research. But that was only one step in the research operations, for one methodology of research.
“In reality, research is more complex, and can vary from interviews to unobtrusive observations and longitudinal studies. It has multi-level complexity including finding niche participants, getting the research completed on time with them and maintaining quality checks,” the chief executive of Echovane, Smriti Gupta, stated.
“This funding allows us to deepen the agent infrastructure behind Echovane, expand our multimodal capabilities, and strengthen the global participant network required to deliver increasingly complex studies with consistency,” the chief technical officer, Vipul Nair, noted.
Also commenting, the chief operating officer of Echovane, Himadri Roy, said, “Having done the research ourselves, we understand the operational pain researchers have to go through to conduct a good research that gives useful insights.”
“Echovane has made complex, multi-market studies feel simple. They find the right hard-to-reach participants, handle the nuances across markets and languages, and deliver actionable insights with remarkable speed and consistency,” the Consumer Science and Product Experience Lead for Haleon, Zee Alcasid, disclosed.
“Echovane turned a month of product research into two days. They reached exactly the right participants and let us test, learn and iterate continuously across multiple audiences, countries, product variants all within a single study that would be impossible to execute at speed and scale,” the chief product officer for Trustly, Adam D’arcy, stated.
A spokesperson for Titan Capital said, “We have backed Smriti, Vipul and Himadri because they have deeply understood why market research has stayed slow and expensive for decades.
“With Echovane, they are building an AI-native, end-to-end research platform focused on the quality of the final insight, encoding each client’s context into a system that gets sharper with every study.
“They are turning research from a recurring expense into compounding infrastructure — faster, cheaper and genuinely deeper. Their first-principles thinking and capital-efficient execution gave us confidence in Echovane’s long-term potential.”
By Kestér Kenn Klomegâh
Russia’s system of foreign students’ admission is currently experiencing a completely different shape, due to the rapidly shifting geopolitical reality. The emerging trends are closely connected with increasing the number of highly interested applicants rather than the quality of education. The geopolitical shift is pushing Russia to make education for young Africans an ultimate priority. The quota campaign has already begun as the figure compares favourably with previous benchmarks but, to some considerable extent, noticeable challenges are currently affecting enrollment from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Despite that, general interest in Russian education among foreign nationals is increasing; the quota campaign confirms this trend. Last year, for instance, there were about 144,000 registrations in Rossotrudnichestvo’s Education in Russian system. The number has exceeded 160,000 in 2026. What is important here is that Russia shows preparedness to get more students from developing countries, especially from Africa and uses it as a factor for influencing its foreign policy in the region.
Regarding educational initiatives, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in conjunction with relevant agencies and organisations are active in Africa. Noticeably, Russia is developing and expanding the existing, successfully operating cooperation in the sphere of education. In fact, priority is given to projects in the field of education and training of professional personnel for African countries. Currently, over 37,000 students from Africa are studying at Russian universities. Reports say a gradual increase in the number of scholarships for African citizens and the expansion of the range of professional training programs will provide a strong incentive for further promoting education at Russian universities.
This will continue to actively strengthen inter-university ties with African partners, including through specialised umbrella organisations such as the Russian-African Network University, the Consortium of Technical Universities “Nadra Africa” based at the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University, the Russian-African Network Transport University, and the Consortium of Russian Universities Working in West Africa based at the NGO “Centre for Public Diplomacy.”
Reports further indicated that the Rossotrudnichestvo representative offices—the Russian Science and Culture Centres—operating in eight African countries, as well as the Open Education Centres operating under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Education in 31 African countries, serve as a solid foundation for our humanitarian presence in Africa. They serve as conduits for the Russian language and culture on the continent. It is, however, hoped that their number would only increase in the subsequent years.
While addressing the staff and students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated Russia’s readiness to cooperate actively in the sustainable economic development and to strengthen efforts at training the needed specialists and professionals for Africa. After the collapse of the Soviet system in 1991, there were problems sustaining relations with Africa. Then, after more than a decade, Russia started to return to Africa. This process has been ongoing for the past 15 years, according to the top Russian diplomat.
According to Lavrov, these past few years have been characterised by frequent interactions between Russian and African Foreign Ministers, plethora of MoUs were signed that set out the broad parameters of cooperation. Russia’s Education Ministry and the Foreign Affairs Ministry have raised the quotas for many African countries, the highest given to Angola, Ethiopia, Namibia and Mozambique, and South Africa.
According to a report posted on the MFA website in August, for instance, some 1,120 Angolans have enrolled, on Russian scholarships or grants, at various institutes and universities throughout the Russian Federation. Figures for other African countries are available on the official information portal of the ministry.
Besides state-sponsored students, Russia’s Education Ministry has also launched a large-scale educational campaign targeting the recruitment of private foreign students into its educational institutions across the Russian Federation. The program is to be implemented until 2025, which has a website (studyinrussia) translated into different languages, seeks to boost the popularity and improve its image abroad.
Undoubtedly, Russia aims at strengthening the next generation of pro-Russian elites who will help promote its interests, including long-term ones in their home countries. With this in mind, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ultimately, hope to improve the efficiency of “soft power” in Africa, though not to the levels during the Soviet era.
Understandably, Russia is now targeting Africa’s fast-growing population as a huge potential market for knowledge transfer and export education. Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a widely circulated Russian daily newspaper, reported that Russia has been focusing on the young population in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, targeting the elite and middle class in these markets for the export of education, which has great potential.
The newspaper reported on the advantages of multiculturalism and cross-cultural interactive activities paving the way for integration in Russian society. As far back as 2023, Russia’s Federation Council and State Duma (upper and lower houses of parliament) passed a bill. That bill was finally signed into law, allowing foreign students the right to employment, a replica of the work and study model in Western and European countries.
Professor Viktor Sadovnichy, Rector of Moscow State University and Chairman of the Russian Rectors’ Association, an organisation that unites more than 700 heads of higher education institutions, argued that education and demography are interconnected; developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have growing middle classes. “This favours the export of our education; it has great potential cooperating in the education sphere, it could serve as a huge market – training young professionals that are in demand on the labour market,” Sadovnichy said, addressing a plenary meeting of the Russian Rectors’ Association at Peter the Great St Petersburg State Polytechnic University.
Professor Natalia Vlasova, Deputy Rector at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of the Ural State University of Economics in Yekaterinburg, explained that many African countries are developing rapidly, and the African elites and the growing middle-class have great potential for sponsoring their children’s education abroad. “In the times of the Soviet Union, African countries were strategic partners, and now we should reactivate these relations because in the near future they will have big economic and political power. This could, indeed, be a huge market and has the business potential,” she noted assertively.
An educational survey released in September 2024, divided into five major groups, said Russia has made significant efforts at improving teaching (the learning environment), research, citations (research influence), knowledge transfer, and international outlook (staff, students, research) in the educational field, according to the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.
