Russia is courting African states. The US shouldn't overreact.

As part of an effort to keep Russia on the radar of African countries still struggling from some of the negative externalities of Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted African leaders in Moscow last week for the third Russia-Africa summit. Between October 28 and 29, Russian officials met with their African counterparts in high-level discussions covering a wide range of issues, primarily focused on continued security relations and opportunities for greater economic collaboration.

Of course, Russian engagement with Africa isn’t new. The Russian paramilitary group Africa Corps has around 2,500 fighters on the continent, where it has formed relations with a number of African governments to fight armed groups in exchange for payment, including through access to commodities. The paramilitary group, which has committed human rights abuses and has largely failed to stop the spread of the armed group violence, has caused a souring of Russian goodwill in Africa.

But in an increasingly geopolitically fractured world, African leaders are looking for any partner willing to offer strong terms, Russia included. Forty-eight African countries sent delegates to the summit, with 22 sending heads of state. Although this represented a decrease from the 43 heads of state who attended the first summit in 2019, it’s a notable increase from the 17 African heads of state who attended the previous summit in 2023 in St. Petersburg, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was still fresh on the minds of leaders across the Global South.

The U.S. should adopt a balanced response to Russia’s courting of African partners. Policymakers in Washington often view Russia as a necessarily nefarious actor in the Global South — a country whose actions are geared entirely towards usurping American interests wherever it goes. But Russia, like all countries, has its own economic and security objectives, many of which exist independent of its rivalry with the West. Where Russia can serve as a productive partner to African states — especially as a mediator to resolve thorny conflicts or as a trade partner providing Africans grain and other goods that help improve food security — American interests could indeed be advanced.

The situation in Ethiopia offers an instructive example. Just as the summit was kicking off, news emerged that Russia had expedited the sale of 12 fighter jets to Ethiopia, which is fighting rebels in its northern states and is facing increasing tensions with its northern neighbor, Eritrea. Russia also agreed to send Ethiopia four defense batteries, which will arrive at a later date.

Despite the sale of this defense equipment, there might be an opening for Russia to flex its diplomatic muscle in the conflict. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, who attended the summit in Moscow, gave an interview on Russian television in which he expressed a willingness to allow Russia to negotiate solutions to the ongoing crisis brewing between the two neighbors. Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed, who also attended the summit, has previously expressed interest in having the Russians join other countries in mediating an end to the tensions with Eritrea. Russian officials have confirmed they’d be interested in mediating a peace agreement.

From the perspective of the United States, any potential end to tensions in the region would be beneficial to its interests, given the widespread economic investments and substantial geopolitical interests the United States has in the region. The U.S., therefore, ought to welcome the idea of Russia successfully lowering tensions in the Horn through diplomatic mediation.

Beyond security relations, the big news coming out of the summit was an effort by Russia to expand its economic connections to the continent.

Trade between Russia and Africa stood at an estimated $27 billion in 2025, far below the $40 billion Putin had established as his goal during the 2019 summit, but still a sizable increase from the $16.8 billion of trade between the two in 2019. This time around, the Russians set out a new goal of reaching $50 billion in trade with the continent in the “near future,” claiming that Russian companies are deeply interested in expanding the trade of grain and fertilizer to Africa. Last year, Russia exported over 18 million tons of grain to Africa, and its fertilizer shipments to the continent have increased from 1.5 million tons last year to 2.2 million tons so far this year.

Russia is a major energy exporter and is looking to expand this industry in a continent hungry for more diversified energy options. At the summit, agreements with at least six African countries were announced on nuclear energy, and the Russian state energy company Rosatom is in advanced talks with Egypt, Togo, Namibia, and Tanzania to build floating nuclear power plants off their coasts.

These energy agreements should signal to U.S. policymakers that Africa’s increasing interest in diversifying its energy mix is advancing at a rapid clip. If the United States hopes to seize on energy demand in Africa to export its own technologies to African consumers, it should move fast by incentivizing greater American investment in the continent’s energy through the levers of the Development Finance Corporation.

Russia’s interest in this region is not, as some suggest, simply performative; rather it is intended to solidify Moscow as a regional actor with the ability to advance political and security outcomes at odds with some of the objectives pursued by Western states. With few venues for projecting power directly across the continent, Russia’s ability to entrench itself as a regional player hinges on making compelling pitches to African partners.

Putin’s promise to African leaders to refrain from “neo-colonial exploitation” is a reference that is likely to be well received. Yet these overtures cannot replace the cost-benefit logic that any state would apply when evaluating prospects for bilateral cooperation.

Here, Russia’s prospects are mixed. On the one hand, economic, diplomatic, and political cooperation with Moscow has become a pillar of the multi-alignment strategies adopted by many African countries.

However, the global chaos wrought by the Ukraine war has put a damper on some venues for cooperation. Food and energy security issues have cast a long shadow over Russian engagement with Africa. Moscow agreed to the short-lived Black Sea Grain Initiative (also known as the Russia-Ukraine grain deal) from 2022 through the summer of 2023, which guaranteed shipping corridors extending from Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline, partly out of fear of being perceived as an obstacle to global food security. That concern has given way to a logic of escalation whereby both Moscow and Kyiv have assumed ever-greater risks to degrade each other’s infrastructure.

Moscow’s recent decision to impose a de facto blockade on all shipping from Ukraine’s logistically vital port city of Odessa generates upward pressure on food prices for African and other Global South countries already reeling from energy deficits and other sources of market instability generated by the Iran crisis. Moscow sought to address these concerns by shipping free grain to struggling economies and through targeted export deals with key customers such as Egypt, but such makeshift measures can hardly reverse the war’s harmful macroeconomic impacts. Meaningful, sustained relief can only come through another grain deal, a partial ceasefire covering Black Sea shipping, or an end to the war, none of which seem likely in the short term.

Several African governments, precisely because they value their ability to pursue multi-vector policies, have expressed alarm over reports alleging the forcible recruitment of Africans into Russia’s armed forces. These allegations are credible enough to warrant direct intervention by Putin, who assured his Ghanaian counterpart John Mahama last week that there will be a ban on all recruitment of Ghanaian citizens into Russia’s military; an identical agreement was reached with Kenya.

But herein lies the strategic paradox that has become a defining theme of Russia-Africa ties: Moscow’s prosecution of the Ukraine war has generated powerful incentives for it to strengthen engagement with African and other non-Western states, yet the instability unleashed by that war imposes clear constraints on these relations that can be managed but never fully lifted while the fighting continues.

U.S. policymakers should keep these constraints in mind before overreacting to Russia's next maneuvers in Africa.