This voices piece explains the Wagner Group’s Security Partnerships in African countries, explores the Syrian connection to Russian activities on the continent, and delves into cyber-influence & anti-French sentiment. This article was co-written by Léon Bourgueil, Alistair Langhorne and Saurav Parmar, and edited by Ruyi Liu.
Violence for a Price: Understanding the Wagner Group’s Security Partnerships on the Continent
One important way Russia has expanded its influence in Africa has been its use of the Wagner Group, the semi-state private military company, as a security, training, and counter-insurgency partner to protect regimes and fight against rebel groups on the continent.
While Wagner (since rebranded as the Africa Corps) has been reportedly active in Sudan, Libya, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mozambique, its operations in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali are particularly extensive.
In 2018, CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra received 200 Wagner-linked military instructors after requesting assistance from Moscow to fight anti-government forces. While Wagner has been able to push back insurgents successfully at different points, its forces have reportedly committed various human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, looting, and torture. Nevertheless, Touadéra has defended the group’s presence, and Wagner continues to operate as a combat and training entity in the country.
A similar playbook has been used in Mali. The West African state, which has experienced multiple coups in recent years, welcomed its first influx of Wagner mercenaries in December 2021. Mali’s military junta requested Wagner’s support to prevent further coups and aid its fight against militant Islamist groups such as JNIM and IS Sahel.
African states, particularly those in the Sahel, have been willing to partner with Russia and Wagner because of their deteriorating relationships with Western powers like France, which have struggled to suppress insurgent groups.
Why would Russia and the Wagner Group agree to provide such assistance to numerous African regimes?
One explanation is Africa’s immense wealth of natural resources, such as gold.
According to the Blood Gold Report, Wagner has, at different times, gained permission from governments on the continent to extract and control access to gold sites.
Experts claim that Russia and Wagner have been using their access to African gold mines to earn over US$2.5 billion since they invaded Ukraine. It is believed that Wagner has smuggled gold out of Africa, where it is sold on international markets and laundered back to Russia using shell companies as a form of sanctions evasion.
Access to gold is also a key strategic goal for the Kremlin as it allows Moscow to de-dollarise its economy in the face of increasing economic pressure from the West. During its activities in Sudan to help suppress protests against then-President Omar Al-Bashir, Wagner gained access to the Al-Idaidiya gold processing plant and was able to smuggle as much as US$1.9 billion worth of gold out of the country. In the CAR, the Wagner-linked company Midas Resources has been operating the Ndassime gold mine, generating roughly US$290 million per year of revenue.
Wagner initially relied on lucrative cash payments from the Malian junta as compensation for its services, but in 2023, the group took over at least four gold mines. Although Wagner’s current involvement with those mines is murky, Russia has continued to strengthen its ties to Mali’s gold industry, securing a deal in November 2023 to build a mega gold refinery in Bamako.
The key threat to Wagner’s lucrative African partnerships is a potential failure to provide effective security and counter-insurgency functions for its client regimes. An ambush in Mali over the summer that killed at least 45 Wagner troops shows that this objective is not easily attained.
The Syria Connection: How Regime Change Could Prove Detrimental for Russian Presence in Africa
When considering Russia’s military footprint on the African continent, one cannot discount the importance of its military bases situated in Syria. The Hmeimim Air Base and Tartus Naval Base, for example, act as crucial supply and stopover hubs for expeditionary operations in Africa.
However, the unprecedented upheaval of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime by the rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has firmly placed the future of these bases in doubt. This is exacerbated by the fact that the Assad regime relied on Russian military support, particularly in the form of air power, in halting rebel groups including HTS.
To date, negotiations are ongoing regarding the future of Russia’s presence in the region. However, Russia's ability to maintain its footprint in the Middle East will rest upon compensation agreements for damage caused through airstrikes and an agreement not to conduct any further military activities within the state.
Should Russia’s military presence in Syria be reduced or outright lost, the implications for their activities in Africa will be vast as Russia has accelerated the exploration of alternative bases on the continent.
Eastern Libya could serve as an alternative staging post, where Russia currently operates the Al Kadim airbase and has over 2000 Russian mercenaries stationed. Indeed, they have already commenced the movement of military goods and personnel from Syria to this region. However, the prospect of establishing a permanent footing here faces its challenges.
From a practical perspective, there may be options to establish naval bases in Tobruk and Benghazi respectively. However, the former is limited in capacity and largely designed to service commercial shipping, whilst the latter remains crippled by the impact of the Libyan Civil War.
More broadly, political risk must be considered, given that the de-facto leader of Eastern Libya, General Khalifa Haftar, has pursued working relationships with multiple parties including Turkey and France. Accordingly, should either the continued instability of Libya or the decision to further align with Western NATO powers occur, Russia could once again find itself without an established military presence on the continent.
Meanwhile, alternative options for the re-establishment of a permanent military footing on the African coast include Algeria and Sudan. In respect of the former, whilst they receive approximately 85% of their military equipment and training from Russia, strategically a permanent presence of Russia may not suit Algeria’s wider geostrategic interests, particularly regarding Russian mercenary activity in Mali, which threatens the emergence of Tuareg separatist movement which could destabilise the wider region.
In respect of the latter, whilst there has always been a desire of Russia to establish a Red Sea Port with easy access to the Indian Ocean (as demonstrated by Russian support for the Sudanese Armed Forces), instability caused by the current civil war makes such a prospect difficult to envisage for now.
Fundamentally, any move by Russia to establish permanent military footings in any of these locations will also be received coolly by the West, given the strategic importance of these areas in relation to operating around key shipping routes and establishing regional influence. As such, this could further pose obstacles to Russia establishing bases in these nations.
Not only does the upheaval in Syria present a practical issue, but it has also arguably damaged the perception of Russia as a global power capable of defending its allies, including those in Africa. Indeed, some have pointed to how their presence in Syria was largely viewed as a blueprint for their “regime survival package” , in the form of military support, population control, economic engagement, information operations and political cover within international bodies.
The lack of support provided by Russia to the Assad regime in its final moments will likely cause alarm bells amongst African leaders who similarly rely on Russian support to crush opposition movements. As such, Russia will need to find a way to re-establish its credentials as an effective backer of dictatorial regimes in the Sub-Saharan regime, to continually reap the political and economic benefits of operating within the region.
Russian narratives and anti-French sentiment: unravel Russian cyber-influence in West-Africa
Alongside its military operations and mining operations, Russia has invested significant efforts in creating a complex network of cyber-influence and disinformation campaigns to legitimise its growing presence on the African continent. While this strategy has been deployed in every country where Wagner - rebranded Africa Corps - has intervened, it is most visible and appears to have found fertile ground in French-speaking countries, particularly in West Africa.
Russian cyber influence, which permeates almost every sphere of social life, is a complex phenomenon to grasp, often with minimal direct state control over its diffusion and appropriation.
Russian media outlets have gained prominence in the French-speaking African media landscape, with almost 4,000 websites having shared content produced by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in 2019. Besides an efficient digital marketing communication strategy suited to mobile devices, which play a dominant role in African access to the internet, the success of Russian-produced content in the French language relies on what Limonier and Laruelle (2021) identify as “entrepreneurs of influence”.
Without having direct links with the Kremlin, these actors which operate from Europe, Russia or Africa are at the centre of TV channels and website networks, massively spreading language elements and alternative narratives aligned with Russia’s positions. For example, Luc Michel, a Belgium citizen and founder of the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy and Elections (EODE) - which certified secessionist elections results in Transnistria, Crimea and Donbas- manages websites in Libya and TV Channels in Chad, Cameroon and Benin. For instance, he is a key panelist on Afrique Média TV, which consistently distributes content derived from Kremlin diplomatic sources and official online platforms and whose CEO has been photographed with Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Building on these diffuse networks which reject Western universalism and oppose economic and political liberalism, Africa Corps produces more direct and visible propaganda through social media, which aims to nourish an ‘anti-French’ sentiment, particularly in the Sahel region.
Targeting young audiences with “infotainment” content through X and telegram, the former Wagner group has spread several cartoon videos, which depict Malian soldiers fighting against “Macron’s demons”, rescued in extremis by fighters wearing the Wagner emblem.
Similarly, African Initiative, a media which has brought ex-Wagner members into key editorial positions, organised the launch of a new video game in Burkina Faso in July 2024. Players have to choose to align with either the newly formed junta-led Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) alongside Russia’s Africa Corps or the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), backed by the “neo-colonial” power.
These diverse cyber-influence campaigns in Western Africa attest to the Russian efforts to construct a “saviour narrative” of Russia as a friend of African countries in their quest towards “decolonization, dewesternization and modernization”. At the same time, France has recently faced a significant unpopularity in African-speaking countries, often criticised for its “double standards”, a fundamental rhetoric of the Russian narrative.
However, evaluating the real impact of the diffuse Russian cyber influence operations on a growing “anti-French” sentiment in the region is a hard task, and requires other factors to be taken into account.
Indeed, anti-imperialist movements in Africa have long criticised France for its support of autocratic regimes, military interventions, and the continued control of its monetary system. Moreover, the recent French foreign policy inconsistency in Africa, the persistence of terrorist threat despite the deployment of Barkhane operation in the Sahel (2014-2022), and the impunity surrounding the French army’s killings of about sixty civilians in Abidjan in November 2004 can only serve to strengthen the reach of Russian influence and narratives in the continent.
Ultimately, Russia's diverse cyber-influence campaigns—spanning state-controlled media, decentralised networks of influence, social media, and even video games—serve a strategic purpose: to entrench anti-Western narratives and cultivate an environment conducive to its military and economic ambitions in Africa.