OPINION: The failures of the West, as well as the legacy of colonialism, have forced some African nations to seek geopolitical partnerships with Russia and China.
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When war broke out between Russia and Ukraine, a line formed at the Russian Embassy in Addis Ababa with a few dozen Ethiopians ready to fight for Russia.
Why this answer?
To understand the views of some Africans on Russia as their favorite superpower, you have to understand how the West has repeatedly failed Africans, not to mention the legacy of Western colonialism that Africans still endure to this day.
China has become a major economic player on the African continent over the past three decades, but Russia is a major player on the military front as sub-Saharan Africa’s largest arms supplier.
Russia’s footprints are beginning to be felt in many of the continent’s major military conflicts, often through arms sales, but sometimes boots on the ground through private military forces linked to the Russian government.
The Wagner Group, a secret private military outfit operating out of Moscow, has been busy all over the African continent, while remaining involved in the war in Ukraine on Russia’s side.
The Wagner Group is headed by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who started out as a caterer for Vladimir Putin and eventually expanded his business to provide private military contractors, similar to what Blackwater later renamed Constellis., and other similar companies do it for the US government.
Companies like the Wagner Group offer counterinsurgency and counterterrorism training and advice to African governments struggling to combat militancy, often receiving payments in the form of natural resource concessions, business contracts, or access to strategic locations such as ports and airbases.
Despite the fact that mercenary activity has been illegal in Russia since 2018, these contractors have been involved in various conflicts around the world, including Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and Mali. They have also been accused of human rights violations and abuse of civilians. The use of private security contractors allows the Kremlin to avoid official military casualties and maintain plausible deniability of its actions.
In the case of Ethiopia, Russia and China have always sided with Ethiopia in United Nations Security Council meetings where Western powers sided with Tigray’s regional leaders, who had ruled Ethiopia for 27 years. years and now they were fighting against the central government in a dispute over regional autonomy. And power.
As rebels led by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, advanced on the capital Addis Ababa in late 2021, the United States predicted an imminent collapse of the Ethiopian government and refused to help militarily, forcing the Ethiopian government Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to turn to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates for military aid, which eventually turned the tide of the war.
But the US refusal to help Ethiopia and the Biden administration’s level of economic sanctions against Ethiopia angered many Ethiopians inside and outside the country, prompting those living in the diaspora to vote against Democrats in the elections in Virginia and Georgia, where there are large concentrations of Ethiopians. American people.
Ethiopians with long memories trace their country’s friendship with Russia to the time of the czar and successor Russian governments.
When Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Russia was the only country to stand up to condemn Italy at the League of Nations, where Emperor Haile Selassie urged world leaders to come to his country’s aid, Derese said. Getachew Kassa in a tweet during the meeting. the height of the Ethiopian civil war.
“Ethiopians love history,” added Kassa, a sociology professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. “Sometimes they also carry it. But in this time of darkness, we will remember not only the adversity and scheme of our geopolitical enemies; but the SILENCE of our ‘friends’”.
Seventeen African countries voted to abstain in a United Nations vote that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including South Africa.
There is a very strong feeling of love in South Africa for the American anti-apartheid activists in the US who helped defeat the racist system, but also a lot of residual anger towards the US government, which helped sustain white minority rule. for decades in the name of fighting communism.
“The warm feelings that many South Africans—and other Africans—have for the Soviet era are understandable given the economic, military, and diplomatic assistance that Moscow provided to liberation movements across the continent at a time when the United States and Europe opposed it. to them and even provided aid to their oppressors,” Eusibeus McKaiser and Sasha Polakow-Suranksy wrote in Foreign Policy. “But these perceived historical loyalties and debts have blinded South Africa’s leaders to the reality of what contemporary Russia has become.”
Congolese remember how the CIA helped the Belgians assassinate their young leader Patrice Lumumba and install Mubutu Seseko, who plundered Africa’s largest and most resource-rich country for four decades. Angolans remember how the Russians and Cubans helped push back Western-backed apartheid invasions from South Africa. Mozambicans remember how the West supported the colonial power of Portugal as they fought for their freedom.
The US government seems to be aware of its fragile reputation among Africans and of late went on a charm offensive, inviting former pariahs like Ethiopia’s Abiy to watch the World Cup with President Joe Biden during the recent Leaders’ Summit. USA and Africa.
The summit underscored the work the US has to do to convince Africans that it is not a fair-weather friend and is dedicated to addressing the concerns of Africans in a multipolar world where Russia and China offer an alternative vision of the geopolitical landscape.
Samson Mulugeta has reported from 45 of the 54 countries in Africa and has lived and worked in South Africa for two decades.
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