Sergei Lavrov is on a grand palace tour. From July 24 to July 28, the Russian Foreign Minister will be visiting four African countries: Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and the Republic of the Congo. Putin's chief negotiator not only has a lot of warm words with him, but also a colorful bouquet of lies. Lavrov's briefing is clear: discredit the West by blaming it for the continent's food and fuel crisis while offering Moscow as the only sensible shoulder.
Lavrov should give the impression that Russia, despite its isolation, is still a great power to be reckoned with and spread good cheer in the run-up to the next Africa-Russia summit. And Africa? Almost half a year after the beginning of the war, one still does not really know what to do with the loyalty. It is true that no state has yet joined the western sanctions. Publicly accusing Russia is just as out of the question as long as people eat and the powerful want to remain powerful.
On the continent, people prefer to cook Ukrainian and Russian – literally. Because people's lives simply depend on the grain deliveries. According to data from the UN Trade and Development Conference, countries such as Egypt and Sudan will import more than three quarters of their wheat in 2020, and Somalia and Benin even 100 percent, from the two countries that have been in conflict since February. This dependency also explains why almost half of the African nations did not speak out against the Russian invasion in the UN resolution shortly after the outbreak of war in Ukraine and never corrected this. 20 million tons of grain are piling up in ports on the Black Sea. Appropriately, shortly before Lavrov's departure, Russia signed an agreement to guarantee the unmolested export of the food.
It is obvious that the Kremlin is using hunger at least as a tool, if not a weapon, to blackmail Ukraine and thus the West. Of course, this is not the version from Lavrov's book of fairy tales. "Western and Ukrainian propaganda speculation that Russia is supposedly exporting hunger is absolutely groundless," Lavrov wrote in a statement for the Russian Foreign Ministry before his departure. It is a new attempt by the West to blame Russia for its "headaches." The article appeared in the newspapers of all destinations.
Externally, Lavrov sells the supposedly peaceful, even humanitarian, intentions of the Putin regime. The message: "See who's there for you when the West lets you down again!" But from the Kremlin's perspective, Russia's most important export in the past hasn't been grain or technology, it's chaos. The British Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that since 2014 Russia has made significant efforts to secure influence in Africa with the help of the notorious mercenary group Wagner. Wagner ensures "political stability" in more than half a dozen African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic. Ultimately, the Kremlin contributes to instability on the continent through its (very lucrative) use of private military companies and arms exports. This volatility, in turn, ties the usually totalitarian governments to Moscow. In short, peace in Africa is bad for Russia's business.
"Historical precedents show that while food shortages in Africa are rarely the sole cause of social unrest, they very often contribute to political upheaval," analyzes US magazine The Atlantic. The Arab Spring is the best example of this. The African rulers know and fear that nothing under their power can be as dangerous as a starving population. And precisely their "friendship" is what Moscow cares about. And so it is not Lavrov's mission to convince the African peoples of the Russian innocence of the "situation" in Ukraine, but to make it sweetly clear to the leaders that they can only maintain their power in Moscow's embrace.
"Lavrov's trip to Africa is not an isolated event. It is part of an ongoing dance. Moscow is trying to gain influence on the continent without investing in it," summarizes Australian news network The Conversation. Lavrov makes every effort during his tour to market Mother Russia as a savior. However, the truth is different. As the US investment magazine "fDi Intelligence" reports, less than one percent of foreign direct investment in Africa comes from Russia. Russia needs Africa far more than Africa needs Russia. Covering it up, even reversing it, is the crucial task of Putin's chief diplomat.
Of course, Lavrov's travel destinations were not chosen at random. On his tour, the Kremlin envoy stops in countries whose governments are struggling with political unrest and sometimes even bloody civil wars. And so Moscow is much more concerned with autocrats closing ranks than with nurturing and nurturing classic bilateral relationships.
But why exactly these stations? And what do Lavrov's hosts get out of rolling out the red carpet for him?
What Moscow is playing into is its historic distrust of the West. After all, the continent has rarely fared well with clear commitments to East or West. During the Cold War, many states that had only just become independent were forced to choose between world powers and ideologies - the result was often bitter civil wars.
According to the think tank Observer Research Foundation, many young African states associate colonialism and racism with the West. At the time, the Soviet Union presented itself as a helping hand. This distribution of roles remained firmly anchored in many minds. Even today, according to the British Guardian, many African nations are governed by the same parties that were supported by Moscow during the wars of liberation. A treat for the eloquent Lavrov. In contrast to the West, the Russian approach differs "fundamentally from the 'master-slave' logic that is being imposed by the former metropolitan countries and that reproduces the outdated colonial model," he wrote before leaving. After all, Moscow "did not stain itself with the bloody crimes of colonialism."
With its anti-colonialist and thus anti-Western propaganda, the Kremlin is pounding open doors. Lavrov's superior recently hit this notch with full force. In a speech at the International Economic Forum in mid-June, Putin rehashed the age-old "golden billion" conspiracy theory, which the (Western) elite uses to "divide the world into first-class and second-class people and is therefore essentially racist and neo-colonial." The words of a man who has subordinated everything and everyone to his maintenance of power for decades, whose personal fortune is estimated at around 200 billion US dollars according to the "Washington Post" and who places himself on a par with Tsar Peter the Great (read the background here ). But irony is only a by-product when the goal is division.
After almost half a year of war in Ukraine, the roles are clearly divided from a Western point of view. Ukraine represents good, Russia represents evil. So one might think that the Kremlin doesn't care what the West thinks, or that Russia has even lost this information war. But that is only the half truth. In fact, when it comes to opinion-making, Moscow has simply opted for a more worthwhile goal, writes the US magazine The Atlantic. The Russian disinformation campaigns have found fertile ground on the African continent, where anti-Western sentiment already prevails to a large extent.
According to a report by "Spiegel", the Kremlin is also making every effort to conduct a disinformation campaign in many African countries. The Kremlin broadcaster Russia Today (RT) and the state news agency Sputnik have built a dense network in West Africa. 622 African news portals are supplied with Kremlin content - 37 of them in Mali alone. Many Russian media now also offer their content in French – one of the most widely spoken languages in Africa.
And what does the snow-white West have to say about all this? Instead of subjecting Lawrow's fairy tale book to a high-profile fact check, the West is counterattacking in Macron as a personal union. "Russia is one of the last colonial powers," said the French head of state during a visit to Benin in West Africa on Wednesday. He could have just as stubbornly said, "No, you're the bad guys!" On top of that. The day before, at a joint press conference with his Cameroonian counterpart, the head of government of one of the once largest colonial powers allowed himself to be carried away into accusing the continent of "hypocrisy" in its stance on the Ukraine war. In the Kremlin you should be rolling with laughter.
It is precisely this moralizing of the West that pisses off many African heads of state - and paves the way for Moscow. Up to now, the continent has always had to bow down to western donors; Development aid is usually linked to conditions. The fact that they are justified - after all, it's about not letting the flow of money seep into the pockets of corrupt heads of state - is now taking revenge. Because Russia makes no moral claims, which is particularly attractive for authoritarian regimes. Should the West withdraw its investments in the course of a rapprochement with Russia, this would probably mean irreparable damage for the African states. They had no choice but to look for new "friends".
And so, while Lavrov and Macron berate each other as devilish colonial masters, the people of Africa are the starving, the suffering, the plaything of the great powers. As always.
Sources: Russian Foreign Ministry; "The Atlantic"; "The Conversation"; "The Guardians"; "Mirror"
