Russia’s return to Africa: a renewed challenge to the West?

ABSTRACT We track the major developments in Soviet-African relations as a prelude to recently revived Russian policy. Russian policy today is much less ideological than that of the Soviet Union and relies more on the establishment of mutually beneficial economic relations. Soviet/Russian policy in Africa over six decades has been motivated by more than by traditional security concerns. In the case of the former, the effort to encourage and speed up a global communist revolution, along with geopolitical competition with the US and the West were central. Now, although geopolitical competition remains an element of Russian policy, the major interest has been markets for exports and access to energy and minerals as part of the goal of re-establishing Russia as a major global power.