The countries of Central Africa are among the world’s regions richest in natural resources. Significant deposits of crude oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, cobalt, copper, uranium, coltan, and rare earth metals give the region significant geostrategic importance. Paradoxically, this wealth of natural resources has not translated into sustainable socioeconomic development. Most countries in the region are characterized by high levels of political instability, protracted armed conflicts, weak state institutions, widespread corruption, and high levels of poverty. As a result, Central Africa remains one of the most unstable regions in the world, where control over natural resources is both a source of internal tensions and a subject of international rivalry. The region’s wealth of natural resources, combined with the weakness of its states and their limited ability to exercise effective control over their territories, has turned the region into an arena of intense geopolitical rivalry. The primary competitors for political, economic, and military influence are China, France, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, USA and other European Union member states, which use economic instruments, infrastructure investments, military cooperation, and diplomatic efforts to strengthen their presence in the region. The Russian Federation plays a particularly important role in the competition for influence in Central Africa, as it consistently seeks to expand its political, military, and economic presence in the region.
During the Cold War, Central Africa was an arena of rivalry among the superpowers; however, unlike East or Southern Africa, it was not one of the Soviet Union’s main areas of engagement. The USSR’s primary goal was to limit the influence of Western powers, especially France, and to gain new political allies by supporting anti-colonial movements and governments that declared a socialist orientation. Moscow’s most important partner in the region was the People’s Republic of the Congo (Congo Brazzaville), with which it developed military, economic, and educational cooperation, including arms deliveries, officer training, and the education of students at Soviet universities.[1]
In the other countries of Central Africa (Central African Republic, Chad, Cameroon, and Gabon) the Soviet Union’s influence remained limited due to France’s strong position, political instability, and the region’s limited economic importance to Moscow. In the late 1980s, with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and the deepening economic crisis in the Soviet Union, military and economic aid to African nations was gradually scaled back. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought the first phase of the Soviet presence in Central Africa to an end and led to Russia’s near-total withdrawal from the region for over a decade. The process of rebuilding Russian influence in Africa began in the early 21st century with Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. Russian policy toward the continent drew on the tradition of the Soviet presence in Africa, utilizing cooperation networks, political contacts, and diplomatic channels established during the Soviet era.[2, 3, 4] The implementation of this strategy was facilitated not only by historical contacts and relationships with the political elites of many African countries, but also by the fact that Russia, unlike most Western countries, had no colonial past on the continent. This allowed Moscow to present itself as a partner free from the historical burdens associated with colonialism and to more effectively construct an anti-colonial and anti-Western narrative. At the same time, the gradual reduction of the presence of some Western countries (primarily France) and the deepening political instability in many African nations created a geopolitical vacuum that Russia consistently sought to exploit to advance its own political, military and economic interests.[5]
