Armaments fair under another name

Russia-Africa summit. Moscow, Friday, October 30, 2026.

Russia-Africa summit. Moscow, Friday, October 30, 2026.

Although people from Africa play a small role in everyday Russian life, Russia's leadership took the third Russia-Africa summit, which took place in Moscow on Wednesday and Thursday last week, just as important. Russian President Vladimir Putin proudly announced the number of nearly 40,000 students from Africa who were studying at Russian universities - fewer than at German universities. Students make up the majority of citizens of African countries residing in Russia.

Leaving Russia turned out to be not so easy for the summit participants. Ukrainian drones largely paralyzed Moscow airports for hours. However, the visit was worthwhile for many of the more than 3,500 delegates from 74 countries, 26 of which are not on the African continent. In the end, 104 cooperation agreements and 62 declarations of intent were signed; even if a number of the agreements only concern the deepening of existing relationships, for example in the field of education. 21 of the 48 participating African states were represented by their respective heads of state; at the previous summit in the summer of 2023 in Saint Petersburg there were 17, but in 2019 there were 43. Only six countries on the African continent were not represented this time.

Overall, Putin can be satisfied with last week's diplomatic results. Immediately before the summit, a meeting of the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries, founded there in 2008, took place in Moscow, attended by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. In addition, on Thursday last week, Putin received a call from Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Norway's Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who initiated negotiations for peace talks with Ukraine. There was a lot of criticism of the conversation; Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, for example, later called the phone call a "go it alone" that she viewed "very skeptically."

Last week, however, it was not only representatives of Western states who publicly took exception to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine. In Moscow, Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, the President of the Democratic Republic (DR) of Congo, which currently holds a seat on the UN Security Council, also called for an open dialogue about ending the war in Ukraine. »We insist that the protection of the civilian population must remain a priority. Such conflicts are not alien to our people, they are international in nature,” said Tshisekedi. Putin then spoke of the humanitarian operation in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian front-line town of Oleshky, from which dozens of people who remained there were recently evacuated. The “opposite side” is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” there. The DR Congo has been receiving extensive arms supplies from Russia for many years.

Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama also spoke out against the continuation of the current wars and in favor of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. The topic was also Russian recruiting agencies, which lured thousands of African citizens to the front in Ukraine with false promises, which the human rights organization Amnesty International recently described as “human trafficking” (Jungle World 4/2026). Mahama secured a commitment from Putin to stop such recruitment of Ghanaian nationals. Ghana's Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa announced this on Facebook. In his contribution, he also referred to Russia's willingness to build a nuclear power plant with an output of 2,000 megawatts in Ghana. Cooperation in the military, agriculture and education should also be expanded.

Russia's plans in Africa sound ambitious. At the plenary session, Putin promised to double sales of goods to the African continent in the foreseeable future; So far, Russia has mainly exported grain, fertilizer, oil and, above all, armaments. Between 2022 and 2025, this had grown from $18 billion to $27 billion, with much of this coming from trade with the North African countries of Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. However, Russia is not even one of Africa's ten largest trading partners. Other sea-connected countries such as Senegal, Nigeria, Togo or even Kenya and Tanzania could in the future be developed into transshipment points for expanding trade relations within the continent, said Andrei Zhelkovnikov, a senior fellow at the Africa Institute at the Moscow Higher School of Economics, hopefully to the Russian business magazine Ekspert. But it is also a fact that Russia sells far more to its African partner countries than the other way around. The trade surplus on the Russian side is over $10 billion every year.

Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama secured a commitment from President Putin to stop the recruitment of Ghanaian nationals to fight in Ukraine.

In the future, grain deliveries could possibly be carried out via the northern route through the Arctic Ocean. Because the Black Sea route is too unsafe due to the war, the first loading of a ship with grain took place last week in the Arctic port city of Murmansk.

Reducing this imbalance in trade is difficult because of the foreign exchange shortage in most African countries. On the other hand, there could be opportunities in Africa to circumvent Western sanctions. At the summit, Putin fantasized about a possible relocation of Russian production facilities to Africa; For example, the assembly of trucks from the Kamaz or Ural brands could be considered.

How realistic such projects currently are remains to be seen. What has proven successful for Russia is the sale of Russian military equipment, for which there are numerous buyers in Africa. “The current order portfolio with countries on the continent accounts for about 30 percent of the total volume of contracts signed by the company,” the Russian news agency Interfax quoted the head of the state arms export agency Rosoboroneksport, Aleksandr Mikheyev, as saying. A billion-dollar business for Russia.