Riyaz Patel
The Kremlin says $12.5bn worth of deals were struck during the first ever Russia-Africa Summit.
“Let’s drink to the success of our joint efforts to develop full-scale mutually beneficial cooperation, wellbeing, peaceful future and prosperity of our countries and people,” Russian president Vladimir Putin said in a toast at the formal summit dinner in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
In a symbolic gesture, Moscow flew two Tupolev Tu-160 nuclear bombers to South Africa as the summit opened, the first time the aircraft had landed on African soil.
An agreement between Russia’s Petrosal and Roggio will see an investment of US$400mn in the development of South Africa’s oil and gas industry.
Russia has defence orders worth $14bn from African countries, its state-run arms export agency said at the summit, and sales to the continent account for around a third of Moscow’s military exports.
Putin said Russia had agreed “military technical cooperation agreements” with more than 30 African states, to supply weapons.
“Some of these deliveries are free of charge,” he added.
Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, described Russia’s offerings as “no strings attached . . . especially now compared to the EU, which is refocusing all its engagement with Africa on preventing migration and that could potentially create bad will.”
The event drew 43 African heads of state and government in a geopolitical coup for Putin, as Moscow seeks to rebuild ties with the continent amid souring relations with the west.
Putin promised to double trade within the next “four to five years.”
A marathon schedule of back-to-back bilateral meetings with visiting delegations on both days of the summit to offer deals on everything from diamond mining projects in Namibia to drilling rights in Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria, while state-run atomic energy group Rosatom inked a preliminary agreement to build a nuclear power plant in Ethiopia.
“Summing up its results, we can immediately say that this event really opened a new page in relations between Russia and the states of the African continent,” he said at the end of the first Russia-Africa summit.
Putin added that the engagements were “business-like, at the same time very, friendly, if not emotional, which created a special atmosphere for discussion.”
