Russia-Africa summit signals new challenge to US influence

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

Russian-African cooperation is clearly on the rise - and so is Washington-Moscow competition. The third Russia-Africa Summit held in Moscow on October 28-29, 2026, brought together representatives from 48 African countries - including around 22 heads of state or government.

On the sidelines, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and African Union Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Ali Youssouf signed the Russia-African Union Commission Plan of Action for 2027-2029.

The document covers technology, education, agriculture, peace and security, among other fields, building on earlier memoranda.

Separate cooperation agreements were signed with the Southern African Development Community and other regional bodies. Putin reported bilateral trade above 27 billion dollars in 2025, some 40,000 African students in Russia, and military-technical agreements with 45 African states.

This institutional step comes as American-Russian rivalry intensifies across the continent, in the New Cold War.

Commentator Ben Poulin (a former US Army serviceman), writing in the Geopolitical Monitor, frames Russia’s approach as a bargain of sorts: Africa Corps and its Wagner predecessor offer security assistance to governments facing insurgencies or isolation, securing access and leverage.

From an American perspective, the US withdrawal from Niger in 2024 left a monitoring gap in the Sahel that Russian forces moved to fill. Poulin urges Washington to counter with diplomacy, investment and a steadier security presence so that exclusive reliance on Moscow becomes less attractive.

Yet the picture here is much wider than a simple zero-sum contest. One may recall that Moscow’s ties with Africa rest on a long historical foundation: the Soviet Union backed anti-colonial and national liberation movements across the continent, supplying training, arms and political support to forces fighting colonial rule and apartheid.

That record in itself contrasts with Western policies that often prioritized strategic alignments with colonial powers or anti-communist regimes.

This legacy still generates soft power for Russia today. Segments of Africa's political elites retain memories of Soviet-era solidarity; and Moscow continues to invoke it without having to invent legitimacy from scratch.

The same cannot be said of Washington’s historical footprint in many of the same regions.

Contemporary cooperation builds pragmatically on those foundations. Russia maintains military training and arms relationships while expanding into infrastructure, energy and education. Egypt’s El Dabaa nuclear plant, built with Russian technology, creates decades-long technical and industrial links.

BRICS mechanisms, including the New Development Bank, offer additional channels for financing and South-South cooperation.

Agricultural exports and fertilizer shipments further cement practical ties. These initiatives illustrate Moscow's efforts to build practical partnerships without necessarily demanding exclusive alignment.

African governments, for their part, are not simply choosing sides. Countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa work with multiple partners at once. This “hedging” strategy, aimed at strategic autonomy in a multipolar setting, allows them to extract advantages while avoiding over-dependence.

In geopolitical terms, this also resembles what scholars call “soft balancing”: states seeking to counterbalance a dominant power through diplomatic and economic partnerships - rather than direct military confrontation. For African countries, closer ties with Moscow need not mean taking Russia’s side against Washington. They can instead provide additional leverage in dealing with Western powers, thereby expanding their room for maneuver.

The African Union itself stresses sovereign choices and continental priorities. No wonder many African capitals treat competition among external powers as an opportunity rather than a threat.

So much for the idea that every Russian advance automatically equals an American loss. The depth of this non-aligned impulse remains underreported in many Western analyses.

I commented before on African leaders opting for nonalignment amid Western tensions, and Moscow’s long-standing military and ideological solidarity in this case has been reinforced rather than invented.

Assessments from the recent summit show leaders calling for deeper trade, infrastructure and security ties on equal terms.

Putin’s criticism of Western neocolonialism found a receptive audience precisely because of the historical contrast.

Washington under President Trump is seeking ways back in, lifting certain sanctions and exploring renewed intelligence cooperation. Exercise Flintlock 2026 demonstrated remaining partnerships.

In any case, offers of infrastructure and investment will have to compete with the political capital Russia already holds. Strong enough historical legitimacy and practical alternatives allow Moscow to expand without conquest. The continent is thus becoming an arena of competitive multipolarity in which African agency, not external zero-sum logic, increasingly sets the terms.