Africa in a global changing economic and political power scenario encompasses a very important place and became a center of global political, economic and diplomatic activities. Keeping in view its immense importance Russia focused Africa and has given importance to it in its foreign policy and its diplomatic activities.
Africa is the world’s second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia in both aspects. It has an area of 30.37 million square kilometers and a population of 1.39 billion people. It covers 20% of earth’s land and 6% of its total surface area with 1.4 billion people as of 2021 live, it accounts for about 18% of the world’s population. Africa’s population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the maiden age is around 20 years while the world’s maiden age is 30 years. Despite the wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global content.
Economic Indicators
Population 1.39 billion (2023)
GDP (Nominal) US$ 3,140 billion
GDP (PPP) $ 8,860 billion
GDP growth 3.9 %
GDP Per Capita (Nominal) $ 2,260
GDP per Capita ( PPP) $ 3,370
Recently Russia got another big success by holding “Second Russia Africa Summit” at St Petersburg on 27-28, July 2023. The Russia-Africa Summit is the highest profile and largest-scale event in Russian African relations, aimed at bringing about a fundamentally new level of mutually beneficial partnership to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. The goal of the event is to promote efforts to strengthen comprehensive and equal cooperation between Russia and African Nations across all areas of society including politics, security, economic relations, science and technology, and the cultural and humanitarian spheres. The First Russia-Africa Summit took place 23-24 October,2019 in Sochi under the motto of “For Peace, Security and Development”. This was the first time such a large-scale event had been held in the history of modern Russia, and was unprecedented in Russian-African relations. The participants identified priority areas of economic cooperation where concrete results could be achieved in the coming years. A closing declaration was adopted at the end of the Summit, outlining the approval of goals and objectives for the future development of Russian-African cooperation across politics, security, economics, science and technology, culture and humanitarian sphere.
The Second Summit and Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum on 27-28 July,2023 was a big success for Russia and indication of Russian growing influence, extended partnership with countries and immense opportunities for Russia and African countries. This summit marked the second time that events of such a magnitude with a focus on a wide range of relations between Russia and the countries of the African continent have been held. Despite unprecedented pressure from the west, the forum and summit were attended by official delegations from forty-three countries, out if which twenty-seven countries were represented by the head of states or the second highest officials, and the five largest integrations organizations of the continent. The summit was consisted of two plenary sessions held on 28 July,2023. Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chairperson of the African Union and president of the Union of the Comoros Azali Assoumani, Chairperson of the African Union Commission Moussa Faki Mahmat, and the heads of state from African countries spoke during the first part of the Summit Discussions continued in the format of a working breakfast during the second meeting of the Summit. It had a substantive and engaging exchange of views on the entire range of themes of strategic cooperation between Russia and African countries. It also had identified the main areas for further joint work and outlined plans to strengthen foreign policy coordination and increase trade and investment flows, as well as industrial cooperation between Russian and the countries of African continent. The result it had achieved will form a good foundation for the further the Russian African partnership in the interests of prosperity and well-being of their people. These were the expressions given by Vladimir Putin during his closing speech at the second plenary session of the summit. During the discussions, the participants declared their commitment to jointly building a new, fairer multipolar architecture of the world order based on the sovereign equality states and mutually beneficial cooperation.
The Summit resulted in the adoption of five key documents.
v Declaration of Second Russia-Africa Summit
v Declaration of the Second Russia Africa Summit on the Prevention of an Arms race in outer Space
v Declaration of the Second Russia-Africa Summit on Cooperation to Ensure International Information Security
v Declaration on the Second Russia-Africa Summit on strengthening cooperation to Combat Terrorism
v Action Plan of Russia-Africa partnership Forum for 2023-2026
Two documents were also signed with leading African integration association in Vladimir Putin’s presence
§ Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) were also signed between the Russian Government and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) on fundamental issues concerning relations and cooperation
§ Memorandum of Understanding between the Russian Government and Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) on fundamental issues concerning relations and cooperation
The business programme of the Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum featured discussions on how to unleash the potential of Russian-African cooperation. A humanitarian dimension was added to the traditional political and economic focuses.
The central event of the Forum was the plenary session, which was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chairperson of the African Union and President of the union of the Comoros Azali Assoumani, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export Import Bank Benedict Oramah and New Development Bank President Dilma Rousseff. The meeting was moderated by Director of the Institute for African Studies of The Russian Academy of Science Irina Abramov. This marked the second time that Russia hosted events in the Russia-Africa format. This year, the discussions of the Economic and Humanitarian Forum were full of practical proposals, particularly in the humanitarian and technological fields, and generated 9,000 participants and media representatives of business and the scientific community. Over 9,000 participants and media representatives from Russia and 104 foreign states and territories took part in the events this time. The participants included around 1,000 representatives of foreign business, more than 2,000 representatives of Russian business, roughly 1,100 representatives of foreign official delegations and more than 750 Russian delegations. A total of 59 panel of sessions were held with 457 speakers in four main areas. The New Global Economy, cooperation in Science and Technology, the Humanitarian and Social Sphere. Event held on the sidelines of the Forum and Summit included the Media Forum, the Congress of University Rectors, a roundtable attended by the supreme audit institutions of Russia and African countries, youth programme events, and sessions of the Creative Business Forum and the Healthy Life Forum.
The Forum resulted in the signing of 161 agreements that do not constitute commercial secrets, 146 agreements with foreign organizations and authorities, although the value of the agreements was not disclosed. Most of the agreements were for humanitarian cooperation, with the largest number of agreements concluded in the following industries.
International and Interregional cooperation 56
Education and Science 51
Scientific and technical cooperation 10
Export and Foreign economic activity 10
The Second Summit and Russian Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum generated extensive press coverage and a total of 2031 media representatives were accredited for the event where 1383 were Russia, 456 African and 192 media outlets were from other countries from 462 organizations of which 203 were Russian and 259 were foreign organizations. More than 50 exhibition stands on key areas of Russian African Cooperation were presented at the forum venue.
Sectors Companies
Fuel and Energy Industry Rostom State Corporation, Gazprom, NOVATEK,
Medicine Healthy Life Stand which presented 25 leading medicine and pharmaceutical organizations
Financial Sector Sberbank, Gazprom Bank, Goznak
Metallurgical Segment United Metallurgical Company, Novotel M, Metallurgical Holding and others
Chemicals PhosAgro, Arnest, Uralchen and Uralkal
IT Sector Positive Technologies, Dr Web, Geoscan and others
Transport Industry KAMAZ, Avtovaz, Russian railways
In a nut and shell this successful African Summit is a clear indication that the efforts to isolate Russia are fruitless and Russia is playing in all the directions of the power game and Western countries should rethink about their policies and start negotiation with Russia and China for the largest interest of global peace and integration.