MOSCOW — The third Russia-Africa Summit closed in Moscow this week with a familiar message from its host and a complicated reality behind the ceremony. President Vladimir Putin told African leaders that Russia offers a better partnership than the West, which he accused of exploiting the continent’s resources, maintaining a colonial approach and using debt to hold back development. Delegations from 48 of Africa’s 54 countries attended the two-day gathering, and 22 were represented by heads of state, according to Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov, a larger turnout of leaders than at the previous summit in 2023, when 17 attended, though smaller than the 43 who came to the first summit in Sochi in 2019. The attendance figures themselves became part of the story, with later counts varying slightly, but the broad picture was clear: Moscow could still fill a room with African delegations, even if the economic weight behind its pitch remains far smaller than that of its rivals.
Putin’s argument, as presented at the summit, was that the world is moving towards a multipolar order and that Russia stands ready to deepen cooperation with African countries in agriculture, health care, education, energy and digital technology. He pointed to grain and fertiliser supplies, to nuclear energy projects, to tens of thousands of African students studying in Russian universities, and to what he described as promising initiatives to introduce advanced Russian digital services on the continent. The summit’s theme, for peace, security and development, was chosen to present Russia not merely as a seller of weapons or wheat but as a comprehensive partner. That framing matters to Moscow because, since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has sought political support, new markets and evidence that Western sanctions have not isolated it, and Africa, with 54 votes at the United Nations and fast-growing populations, is a central part of that effort.
African leaders, however, arrived with calculations of their own, and reporting from the summit stressed that attendance should not be read as alignment. Governments across the continent have spent years diversifying their partnerships, bargaining with China, the European Union, the United States, Gulf states, Turkey and Russia at the same time, and extracting the best available terms from each. For many, a seat in Moscow is a way to keep options open, to secure grain, fertiliser, training or security assistance on terms they consider useful, and to signal to Western partners that they have alternatives, without committing to Moscow’s view of the world. Analysts quoted in summit coverage made the same point in plainer language: African leaders are playing their own game, and Russia is one board among several on which that game is played.
The summit produced documents, though the gap between documents and delivery remains the central question. Participants adopted a joint declaration, a declaration on cooperation in the civilian use of artificial intelligence, and a Russia-Africa Partnership Forum action plan covering 2027 to 2029. The African Union Commission and Russia also signed a cooperation plan covering security, trade, energy, agriculture, health, education and technology, which the Commission itself described as a framework rather than a legally binding agreement. The Kremlin later said about 150 documents were signed during the summit, 53 of them between governments or ministries, covering education, health, trade, transport, agriculture and customs, and that the defence ministries of Russia and South Sudan signed a military cooperation agreement. Those figures are Kremlin claims, and the full texts of the main documents had not all been published when the summit closed, so what the paperwork will mean in funded projects is not yet possible to verify.
The trade figures put the limits of the relationship in stark relief. Russia-Africa trade was estimated at about 27 billion dollars in 2025, according to figures cited by the Kremlin and by analysts, up from about 16.8 billion dollars in 2019 but still well short of the 40 billion dollar target Putin announced at the first summit seven years ago. Longer-term ambitions discussed in pre-summit analysis ranged higher, towards 50 billion dollars and beyond, but no confirmed summit agreement was reported that would, by itself, close that gap. By comparison, China-Africa trade reached about 348 billion dollars in 2025, and European Union trade with Africa was valued at about 395 billion dollars, according to figures cited by Chatham House. In other words, Russia’s trade with Africa is roughly a twelfth of China’s and roughly a fourteenth of the European Union’s, a scale difference that no summit communique can erase.
Egypt illustrates both the concentration and the character of the economic relationship. Bilateral trade between Russia and Egypt reached about 10.5 billion dollars in 2025, according to Russian customs data, making Egypt by far Russia’s largest African trading partner and accounting for nearly 40 per cent of all Russia-Africa trade. Much of that trade is Russian exports, above all wheat, and the pattern repeats across the continent: African exports to Russia are far smaller than Russian exports to Africa, with one analysis putting Russian exports at about 24.3 billion dollars against only about 3.5 billion dollars of imports from African countries. Russian agricultural exports to Africa did grow sharply in the first half of 2026, rising 35 per cent in value to 2.9 billion dollars, with wheat shipments reaching record volumes, and food security is a genuine point of leverage for Moscow. But grain sales, however welcome, are not the same as the investment, manufacturing and infrastructure finance that African governments say they want most.
Security is the area where Russia’s footprint has grown fastest, and also where its record is most contested. In Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, military-led governments that broke with Western partners after coups between 2021 and 2023 turned to Moscow for military support, and Russia’s role has grown through the Africa Corps, a paramilitary organisation that assumed much of the Wagner group’s work after its 2023 mutiny against the Kremlin. The Africa Corps operates openly under Russia’s Defence Ministry and military intelligence, focuses more on training, advising and protecting strategic sites than Wagner did, and has a reported presence in Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Mali and Niger, with Russian instructors also reported elsewhere. In Mali, Russian forces helped the government retake the north-eastern city of Kidal, but insecurity has since worsened and the Africa Corps has suffered significant losses, while in Burkina Faso its personnel have focused on protecting the government during political instability and in Niger its role has been more limited.
The results, as reported by researchers and analysts, are mixed at best. The Sahel, the semi-arid belt south of the Sahara, remains gripped by insurgencies linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin have expanded their reach, including towards coastal West African states. Some analyses report that Africa Corps units withdrew from parts of northern Mali in 2026 and that rebel factions reclaimed localities around Kidal, while other assessments stress that Russian personnel remain concentrated around capitals and strategic sites rather than securing rural territory. Governments in the Alliance of Sahel States, the pact formed by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, present the partnership as an exercise of sovereignty, a rejection of French and Western tutelage. Critics, including analysts quoted in summit coverage, argue that dependence has simply shifted from one patron to another, with heavy financial costs and uncertain security gains, and allegations of abuses against civilians continue to shadow Russian-linked operations.
Who did not come to Moscow was also revealing. The presidents of South Africa, Nigeria and Algeria, three of the continent’s largest economies, did not attend, and Burkina Faso’s leader, Ibrahim Traore, sent his prime minister instead of travelling himself. Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, Kenya’s William Ruto and Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed were among the leaders who did attend, and Burundi’s Evariste Ndayishimiye, the current African Union chair, co-chaired the gathering with Putin. The pattern suggests a summit that is important to a particular set of governments, especially those seeking security assistance or grain and those keen to demonstrate independence from Western pressure, rather than a gathering that speaks for the continent as a whole. It also reflects the sheer diversity of African foreign policy: there is no single African position on Russia, only 54 national calculations that sometimes overlap and sometimes do not.
Education and technology featured prominently in Putin’s pitch, and here too the claims deserve careful reading. Putin said nearly 40,000 African students are enrolled at Russian universities and that more than 300,000 Africans hold Russian degrees, figures reported by state media, and he pointed to branches of Russian universities being set up in Africa. Those numbers, if accurate, represent a real human link, and for students and their families the offer of a funded place can matter more than any declaration. But education ties do not automatically translate into industrial capacity, and analysts note that Russian firms have often awaited state support before investing in Africa, with previous summits producing bilateral agreements but little practical investment. The declaration on artificial intelligence, adopted at the summit, follows the same pattern: it signals an intention to cooperate, but its practical content will depend on funding, infrastructure and skills that have yet to be demonstrated at scale.
The broader context for the summit is a continent courted by many suitors at once. China remains Africa’s largest bilateral trading partner by a wide margin, built over decades of industrial expansion, infrastructure investment and integration into supply chains. The European Union, counted as a bloc, remains the largest trading partner overall, with deep investment stocks and a large services relationship alongside goods trade. The United States and India also trade with Africa at volumes far above Russia’s, and Gulf states have grown rapidly as investors and financiers. African governments have learned to use that competition, and the most successful among them treat every summit, whether in Beijing, Brussels, Washington or Moscow, as a marketplace in which to compare offers. Russia’s offer is distinctive in security and in grain, and it carries political symbolism for governments that want to show they are not bound to Western approval, but on the hard measures of trade and investment it remains a smaller player.
What happens next will be measured less by the declarations adopted in Moscow than by what is funded and delivered before the 2027 to 2029 action plan begins in January 2027. Three tests stand out. The first is grain and fertiliser: whether Russian supplies remain reliable and affordable, and whether African buyers can diversify enough that no single supplier can use food as leverage. The second is security: whether the Africa Corps model can contain insurgencies that have grown despite years of foreign military assistance, or whether the Sahel’s governments will be forced, as some analysts already warn, towards political negotiation with armed groups they currently refuse to talk to. The third is investment: whether the dozens of agreements signed in Moscow turn into factories, power plants, railways and ports, or remain, as some previous summit documents have, largely on paper.
For the United States and Europe, the summit is a reminder that influence in Africa cannot be taken for granted and cannot be won by warnings about Russia alone. African governments have repeatedly said they want partnership on their own terms, with respect for their sovereignty, with investment that creates jobs, and with a voice in the institutions that govern the world. Putin’s pitch spoke directly to those frustrations, accusing the West of colonial habits and debt traps, and for audiences that remember colonial rule and resent conditional aid, that language resonates even when the economic alternative on offer is modest. Whether that resonance deepens into a lasting strategic partnership, or remains a useful bargaining chip in a wider game, is a question that will be answered not in Moscow’s conference halls but in African capitals, markets and battlefields in the years ahead.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from CNN, Chatham House and The Japan Times.