The Secret Scramble for Africa

“The native must realize that colonialism never gives anything away for nothing.” Writing in 1961, Frantz Fanon was witnessing a new era in African history — after a century of near-total colonial domination, the last vestiges of Western empire had at last begun to unravel. Fanon, perhaps one of the 20th century’s most renowned political philosophers, understood the challenges ahead for the independence movements rising across the continent and that the wealthy West would not abandon their economic control of its former territories without resistance, warning his audience that neocolonialism would soon see former colonies “in the yoke of economic oppression.” Fanon did not live to see the ultimate outcomes of decolonization, with 50 African countries liberated by 1977, but his predictions were no less timely for it. As the Cold War reached its climax, Africa would soon find itself yielding not to the subjugation of colonialism but to a more subtle form of exploitation, where rampant wars of liberation disguised superpowers expanding their spheres of influence.

At the first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi, President Vladimir Putin touted friendly relations to an expectant press, boasting that “the development…of mutually beneficial ties with African countries is one of Russia’s foreign policy priorities.” The statement culminated decades of Russian efforts on the continent, and it shined a spotlight on the Putin administration’s overtures to a wide range of African nations, continuing a legacy that began decades ago with the Soviet Union. Framing economic investment as “humanitarian assistance,” Putin asserted that the days of “politically motivated” Soviet aid were over, marking a new era of cooperation. Yet, the shiny veneer of Russian investment concealed an uncomfortable reality for Putin, one in which Russian involvement in Africa entailed more than just peaceful aid. Over 6,000 miles away, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late head of Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group, touched down in Kinshasa where he championed the other side of Russia’s investment in Africa — not with aid, but with war. 

Russian military involvement in Africa traces a long and bloody trail, with Russian weapons and money supporting revolutionary groups in the Angolan Civil War, the Ivorian Civil War, the War in Darfur, the Second Libyan Civil War, and more. Throughout the 2010s, Russia signed 21 military collaboration agreements with African governments, while Russo-African trade ballooned by almost 200% from 2005 to 2015, marking a spate of new efforts to court African leaders. Under the table, the Wagner Group, nominally independent from the official Russian government, has acted in tandem with Russian objectives. Estimates find Wagner to be active in up to 15 African countries, supporting Russia’s status as the largest arms supplier to the continent as of 2018. Taking an approach described as a combination of “arms sales, electoral support, and security cooperation,” Wagner is intimately involved in the politics of a dozen African nations, providing services to Russia-backed candidates and leaders in exchange for diplomatic support, preferential trade agreements, and exclusive mining rights. 

Much to the chagrin of Western policy hawks, Russia is not the only global power staking new claims in the African continent. In a foreign policy approach reminiscent of Russia’s, China has placed a similarly deep emphasis on political overtures in the continent, mirroring the Russia-Africa summit with its own Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. China’s African partners have welcomed foreign investment with open arms. With over $200 billion per year in trade flows, China is now Africa’s largest trade partner, with investment projects ranging from high-speed railways to deep-water container terminals. To countries scarred by histories of predatory IMF structural adjustment programs, China’s supposedly no-strings-attached approach to investment has proven a breath of fresh air, with 46 nations signing onto China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative, a massive trillion-dollar “New Silk Road” to expand China’s diplomatic influence with infrastructural and commercial projects. 

Yet, these overtures are anything but innocent. African journalists have warned of subtle debt trap diplomacy, with China rapidly becoming the largest creditor of many partner nations, and African debt to China rising to some $30 billion by 2016, a massive sum in comparison to creditor GDPs. Amidst the collapse of multiple infrastructure deals, with Sudan, Ethiopia, Cameroon, and Zambia canceling some $3 billion in projects, China has also faced accusations of demanding concessions in the form of natural resource access from creditors, including the usage of copper mines as collateral in Zambia, where debt to China alone is nearly half of GDP. The talk of peace-driven investment has also proven illusory. Chinese military investment in Africa has skyrocketed, with discussions between Chinese and African military chiefs leading to multiple African nations receiving over 90% of their arms from China, a process that has culminated in the establishment of a Chinese military base in Djibouti. 

For all the transparently predatory ways in which Russia and China have exploited thinly-disguised investment efforts in Africa, their efforts have often been well-received by citizens who view them as sources of much-needed cash and reliefs from even more abusive Western investment efforts. In many ways, Russia and China’s appeal to African nations rises out of the exact Western colonial exploitation that Fanon and other independence activists condemned, carrying on the Soviet Union’s heritage as a staunch opponent of Western imperialism. Russia itself touts its position as a foe of the West to attract Africa, accusing Western states of “resorting to pressure, intimidation, and blackmail…to win back their lost influence and dominant positions in former colonies” in a Kremlin press release. 

Through this approach, Putin and Xi have won many friends in Africa, including leaders like Sudan’s Omar Al-Bashir, the Central African Republic’s Faustin-Archange Touadéra, and Mozambique’s Filipe Nyusi, whose nations rank as some of Africa’s most corrupt. Yet, Russia and China’s interests in supporting these regimes are not driven by a genuine sense of camaraderie with victims of colonial exploitation. Instead, Russia seeks to expand its anti-Western sphere of influence, while China grows the horizons of the Belt and Road Initiative, each superpower extorting the nations they have drawn to their sides with resource concessions and military alliances.

Embracing Russia and China, multiple nations in Africa have ironically traded old masters for new ones, with foreign overtures in Africa constituting a form of neocolonialism entirely like the Western abuse they purport to resist. In Mali, the government has exchanged French troops for Russian mercenaries, while the Central African Republic swapped an EU-backed training mission for Wagner support. The consequence is a renewed struggle for power that resembles the original scramble for Africa, only more insidious. With the United States and other nations continuing their own efforts to bring Africa into the West’s fold, the contest over political influence has taken on an ideological character, pitting East against West and authoritarianism against democracy. 

Western policy pundits have been left aghast at the rapid proliferation of Russian and Chinese interests in Africa, describing the situation as costly, worrisome, and even dangerous. The immediate response has been to advise American interests to copy the playbook, with the official U.S. Strategy on Sub-Saharan Africa describing it as crucial to “U.S. National Security Interests.” Yet, the legacy of Western foreign policy remains difficult to forget, with America’s ugly record of CIA interventions, support for colonial regimes, and exploitative corporate involvement. In accusing Russia and China of neocolonialism, American officials have swept their own violent history with the continent under the proverbial rug. 

In this context, the similarities to historic colonization are palpable. East and West alike have treated African nations as playgrounds for their geopolitical interests over the past two decades, exploiting widespread political corruption across the continent for strategic gain. Amidst superpower conflict, nations such as Libya, Mali, and Sudan have been treated as pawns for the powers-that-be, lying host to an influx of arms from Russia, China, and the United States. The proliferation of foreign interests across Africa has also disrupted local political processes, frequently devolving into election tampering and bribery. Despite the claims of genuine interest made by global powers, the influential superpowers in Africa have a consistent track record of supporting undemocratic and even outright despotic leaders in favor of political allegiance.

Yet, more than just politically and militarily destabilizing Africa, Russian and opposing Western powers have also utilized their influence to continue the original aim of colonization, extracting millions in valuable resources from their African allies. Industrial concessions are the name of the game when African leaders need support, with corporate names on both sides such as ExxonMobil, BP, Alrosa, and Gazprom facilitating the flows of African oil and minerals out of the continent. Just as Fanon wrote, neocolonialism exploits the facades of “aid and assistance” to wring economic dependence from former colonies, indebting them to their supposed benefactors and perpetuating this vicious cycle. 

The contestants in this new scramble for Africa may be the globe’s superpowers, but none of them stand to be the real losers in the balance of power. To frame the issue as a zero-sum policy game, as American analysts frequently do, misses the point: the consistent failure by global superpowers to treat African interests as more than mere political pawns denigrates Africa’s political independence, while risking financial crisis and even outright conflict. Overwhelming dependence on conditional foreign investment is clearly capable of producing positive outcomes in the short term, but the long-term consequences for political integrity and even economic health are dire, as Africa’s mounting debt crisis and widespread corruption have displayed. Internecine competition over preferential loans has already been marked as a major source of institutional corruption in Africa, while new investment programs repeat the IMF’s mistakes with different demands, with clearly coercive military and diplomatic alliances. Pundits on either side trade barbs regarding debt-trap diplomacy and modern-day imperialism, but reality displays that no superpower has escaped what fundamentally constitutes a neocolonial attitude towards “partnership” with African nations, repeating the colonial scramble of centuries past. 

The future of this power struggle bodes poorly for Africa. Russian and Ukrainian troops have fought in Sudan while China holds talks regarding the construction of a military base in Equatorial Guinea, holding billions in debt over the small nation. Combined with the withdrawal of peacekeeping troops from much of Francophone Africa, and a recent coup in Niger, the ongoing power vacuums portend further political destabilization in Africa, with global powers standing ready to swoop in and take sides. With the indelible wounds of colonial bloodshed and subjugation still fresh throughout Africa, the prospect of a repeat suggests that both international leaders and successive African governments have learned little in their mutual dealings. Instead, they might do well to note the words of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s revolutionary president: “A state in the grip of neocolonialism is not master of its own destiny.” Now, faced with a pivotal choice between regression and advancement, the world’s superpowers and African leaders would be wise to heed colonialism’s lessons, and allow Africa’s 54 nations to manifest their own destinies. 

Jeffrey Tian ’26 Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at jeffrey.t@wustl.edu