Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Africa this week is Russia's latest attempt to shift the global balance of power away from the west Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev spent this week in Africa, visiting four countries, Egypt, Nigeria, Angola and Namibia. Russian official sources present the visit as purely economic, stressing that its goals are to assist Russian business and to develop mutually beneficial relations with African countries. The president is accompanied by a 400-strong business delegation, and a number of important economic agreements have been signed, particularly in the sphere of energy resources and nuclear power. This seems logical. A number of big Russian companies, such as Alrosa, Rusal, Renova, Rosneft and Gazprom are either involved in Africa or are seeking deals there, yet Russia's trade with the continent falls far behind that of China or India, let alone the US. Russia's own enormous energy resources are located in areas that are not easily accessible, sparsely populated and have extremely unfriendly climatic conditions – so developing them would be a much costlier business than developing the same resources in Africa. But historically, visits of Russia's (Soviet) heads of state to Africa always had a political agenda – for example the 1961 visit by Leonid Brezhnev to Ghana and Guinea and the 1977 visit of Nikolai Podgornyj to Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. Each marked a new stage of Soviet involvement in Africa. Is Medvedev's visit completely different? Not quite. There is, indeed, a serious business element to it – much more serious, in fact, than during the African visit of Medvedev's predecessor Vladimir Putin three years ago. However, there is hardly any doubt that Medvedev's visit is at least as much about policy as it is about business – and perhaps much more so. It has to be considered in the context of Russia's final withdrawal from its negotiations to join the WTO, and the two summits that Medvedev hosted in Yekaterinburg – that of Bric countries and of the members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. The US asked to participate as an observer, but the request was not granted. All these moves are a sign of a new stage of Russia's policy of disengagement with the west and of its leaving western financial and economic space. This tendency has been developing for a few years, but now it has obviously reached a new active phase. During his second term as president Putin often spoke of the need to transform the global economic order in order to diminish its dependence on the west. The Yekaterinburg summits sought to achieve exactly this. In effect, Medvedev's visit to Africa should be seen as a move to create a bloc of countries rich in energy resources. The existence of such a bloc, in Russia's thinking, would increase the political weight of its participants and thus change the balance of power and influence in the world. This may be more difficult to achieve than some Russian politicians think. Some African leaders may still be grateful to Russia for its assistance in their liberation struggles, but they need delivery, not just deals. Russia's record on this is not great. More importantly, however, the competition for the control of energy resources is exactly the field where Russia is bound to find itself in a head-on collision course not just with the west, but also with China, Russia's prize political ally in the new global order as it is seen from Moscow. It remains to be seen, how effective Russia's new engagement in Africa is going to be, and what effect it will have on its bigger goals. But for now it will certainly increase Medvedev's political weight at the coming G8 meeting.
Saturday, 27 June 2009
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