World
Under New Leadership, Mali Opens Doors to Russia
By Kester Kenn Klomegah
With strict pressure from the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the August coup leaders have installed an interim government that will run state affairs until next elections.
Plucked from obscurity, the former Defense Minister Bah Ndaw (here) became the transitional President, while Colonel Assimi Goita serves as Vice President.
The transitional committee made up of representatives of political parties, civil and religious groups agreed on both positions.
According to their biographical reports, both had part of their professional military training in the Soviet Union and Russia respectively – read & watch this video – indicating that the new Malian leadership could be more Russia-friendly.
The transitional civilian government, swearing-in ceremony and inauguration into office took place on Sept 25, completely closed the political chapter on the political administration of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
The military takeover, Mali’s fourth since gaining independence from France in 1960, came after months of protests, stoked by Keita’s failure to roll back a bloody jihadist insurgency and fix the country’s many economic woes.
Over the years, reform policies have had little impact on the living standards, the majority highly impoverished in the country. As a developing country, it ranks at the bottom of the United Nations Development Index (2018 report). The country, however, is home to approximately 20 million people. The primary task, right now, is to draw up “a comprehensive road map” for economic recovery.
Earlier before the September 25 ceremony, Assimi Goita had issued a public statement at a media-covered conference to the Malian population, saying “We make a commitment before you to spare no effort in the implementation of all these resolutions in the exclusive interest of the Malian people.
“We request and hope for the understanding, support and accompaniment of the international community in this diligent and correct implementation of the Charter and the transition roadmap. The results you have achieved allow me to hope for the advent of a new, democratic, secular and prosperous Mali.”
While West African leaders would likely remove the economic sanctions imposed in the wake of last month’s coup, following the installation of a civilian interim president, a number of foreign countries including Russia have already recognized these new developments taken toward stability.
Russia, apparently, is exploring all possibilities to regain a part of its Soviet-era influence as Mali begins to restructure and systematize its state administration.
In an official statement to mark Mali’s 60th anniversary of its independence from France, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) hoped that Mali would fix in place civilian form of government and, focus on holding free and democratic elections following a short transitional period with the assistance of the Economic Community of the West African States and the African Union.
It is noteworthy to recall here that Russia and Mali are linked by friendship and cooperation. In 1960, Mali attained independence following a prolonged struggle and opted for a socialist orientation. There were major projects implemented with Soviet assistance. These include a cement factory, the Kalana gold-mining company, a stadium in Bamako, the Gabriel Toure Hospital, an airfield in Gao and a number of national education facilities. Large-scale prospecting operations were conducted, and 9,000 hectares converted into rice paddies.
Thousands of Soviet educators, doctors and other specialists worked in Mali. Over 10,000 Mali citizens received higher education in Russia.
“We hope that the time-tested Russia-Mali ties will continue to develop steadily in the interests of both states. We would like to congratulate the friendly people of Mali on their national holiday and to wish them every success in achieving nationwide reconciliation, reviving their country as soon as possible, and we wish them peace, prosperity and well-being,” the statement particularly stressed.
As Russia pushes to strengthen its overall profile in the G5 Sahel region, Mali could become a gateway into the region. Russia has made military-technical cooperation as part of its diplomacy and keen on fighting growing terrorism in Africa.
Experts suspected that the regime change in Mali could see Russia-friendly new leaders taking over the country from the French-friendly Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his government, thereby dealing a severe blow to French influence and interests not just in Mali but throughout the Sahel zone that includes Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Research Professor Irina Filatova at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow explained recently in an emailed “Russia’s influence in the Sahel has been growing just as French influence and assistance has been dwindling, particularly in the military sphere. It is for the African countries to choose their friends and people who are now in power will be friendlier with Russia.”
That said, the transitional government could continue to leverage with Russia. Reports indicate that Russia has established cordial relations with the transitional government.
On August 21, Russian Ambassador to Mali and Niger Igor Gromyko met with representatives from the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP). The CNSP is an umbrella organization of military personnel involved in the coup, which wishes to oversee an 18-month transition before returning power to civilian authorities. Russia signed a military cooperation agreement with Mali in June 2019.
In November 2019, demonstrators in Bamako urged Moscow to repel Islamist attacks in Mali as it did in Syria. At the Independence Square demonstrations in Bamako that followed the coup, protesters were spotted waving Russian flags and holding posters praising Russia for its solidarity with Mali.
Samuel Ramani, DPhil candidate at the Department of Politics and International Relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, wrote in the Journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute that “Since Russia possesses a diverse array of partnerships in Mali and Sahel countries are frustrated with the counterterrorism policies of Western powers. Moscow could leverage the Mali coup to secure economic deals and bolster its geopolitical standing in West Africa.”
According to the expert, Kremlin-aligned research institutes and media outlets have consistently framed France’s counterterrorism operations in Niger and Mali as a façade for the extraction of the Sahel’s uranium resources. Russian nuclear energy giant Rosatom, which directly competes with its French counterpart Avenda for contracts in the Sahel, could benefit from favourable relations with Mali’s new political authorities. Nordgold, a Russian gold company that has investments in Guinea and Burkina Faso, could also expand its extraction initiatives in Mali’s gold reserves.
As one of the largest on the continent, Mali is a landlocked country located in West Africa. For centuries, its northern city of Timbuktu was a key regional trading post and centre of Islamic culture. Mali is renowned worldwide for having produced some of the stars of African music, most notably Salif Keita. But, this cultural prominence has long since faded.
After independence from France in 1960, Mali suffered droughts, rebellions, and 23 years of military dictatorship until democratic elections in 1992. Mali has struggled with mass protests over corruption, electoral probity, and a jihadist insurgency that has made much of the north and east ungovernable. President Ibrahim Keita, who took office in September 2013, proved unable to unify the country. With time and commitment to sustainable development and good governance, there is still hope for Mali.
Kester Kenn Klomegah writes frequently about Russia, Africa and BRICS.
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.
